Age of Chaos
by Gigazubyte
Summary: After the echidna empire and the guardian of the emeralds Chaos fall on the same catastrophic night the world is plunged into turmoil. The chao struggle to survive without their patron and a tyrant seeks to fill the power vacuum left by the echidnas.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Ladies and gentlemen, you may be shocked, you may be amazed, for I have gone off my rocker and written... Chao Politics. Why, you ask? Well, I figured nobody else would be crazy enough to try. Also, you may notice that the main character has the same name as I do, which I am told is generally a bad idea. This has less to do with the fact that Giga is a reflection of myself (he's not, we share some traits, but he hates caves and I do not) and more to do with the fact that it is an awesome name and is actually in SA2. I kid you not. Due to the time period in which this story is set the cast will be virtually entirely composed of OCs. Tikal and Chaos are somewhat central to the story, but really won't appear much except in flashbacks. A certain megalomaniacal mammoth mastermind may make an appearance as well. Sadly, this was written long before Chronicles came out, so that story won't be incorporated. My apologies.

Gigazubyte lay on his back. watching the stars wheel by above his head. Tiny specks of light in inky black infinity. As always, their pure white light was captivatingly beautiful. He sighed and closed his eyes.

The crunch of many heavy footsteps reached his ears almost before the voices did. He opened his eyes and sat up, and saw the other chao looking at something behind him, a dozen blue heads staring in the same direction. He spun around. A tremor ran through his body as he saw the echidna troops assembled on the path leading to Chaos' Shrine. They didn't look like they were here to play. Instead they were scowling and brandishing menacing looking pointed sticks. Trying to ignore the intense uneasiness that seized him, he moved closer, curious to see what this was about. The echidnas have never hurt them before, and some were even quite friendly. The entire scene had an eerie quality. The echidnas were bathed in weird orange light, as though by flames, and their voices reached him as through water, distorted but somehow clearly understandable. All other sound had faded away.

"Please, father, don't do this!" He identified the speaker as Tikal. Of all the echidnas, she was the kindest Giga had met. He identified the large male she was pleading with as her father, the leader of the echidnas… Pachamac was his name, Giga thought. Unlike most echidnas in the tribe, who were red or pinkish, he was nearly brown, and his daughter was orange. In contrast to the massive, booming, Pachamac, Tikal was short and slight and soft-spoken. Giga really liked her, but now the fear and pleading in her voice frightened him.

"Get out of our way, Tikal. We need these emeralds to win the war. Do you want to see our people subjugated by those filthy, ungrateful cats?"

"No, but…"

"Then get out of the way!"

"This will only bring pain and suffering. I beg of you, don't do this!" Giga's vague unease turned to outright dread. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew it wasn't good. He felt like this had happened before, but he couldn't remember how it ended, just that it was bad.

"We NEED those emeralds, and we will take them, now stand aside!"

"They don't belong to us! Those emeralds are Chaos'. Please don't bring him and the chao into this war! They're peaceful creatures at heart, they don't deserve this!" Giga turned around to look at the emeralds resting on the pillars around Chaos' shrine. He knew they were powerful and important, but he really had no idea what they were good for besides looking pretty. Why did Pachamac want them so badly?

"Those emeralds belong to us! Move! These blue fluff balls have no use for them, and that so called guardian of theirs is nothing more than the figment of a superstitious imagination!"

"I won't let you do this!" Tikal shouted, placing herself firmly between Pachamac and Giga and spreading her arms wide, as though she could hold back his entire group with her slight frame. Pachamac sighed at looked the echidnas standing in front of the group, just behind him and to his right.

"Restrain her." The two foremost rushed forward and grabbed her by the arms. Tikal screamed. Giga ran forward to help her, not at all sure what he was going to do.

"Now go, and take the emeralds! Don't let these pathetic, tubby little blobs of fur stand in your way!"

One of the echidnas swung his stick and hit Giga squarely between the eyes. A starburst bloomed in his vision and a buzz filled his ears monetarily. When he regained his senses, he heard the other chao being flung aside, screaming shrilly as they tried to get away from the charging echidnas, who didn't seem to care that the chao weren't offering any sort of resistance.

"Don't hurt her! That's an order! She's still my daughter!" Pachamac bellowed, as Tikal broke free of the echidnas pinning her arms and ran toward the chao. One of them tripped her, and she fell hard of the stony ground. Giga regained his feet just in time to be kicked by another charging echidna, and he went sprawling off the path.

He wound up face down in the dirt. He could still hear the screaming, but it sounded like he was hearing it from a great distance and it was being distorted by wind. It seemed to have changed, though. It didn't sound like Chao anymore. Now it seemed the echidnas were the ones screaming. He didn't even realize he had gotten to his feet until his vision cleared.

The sight that met his eyes stopped him cold with horror. A massive monster made of water towered over the shrine. As Giga watched it scooped up several screaming echidnas and sucked them into its body, where they were lost within the swirling vortex. It let out a roar that nearly knocked Giga over, and shot a jet of water that demolished a chunk of the echidna city in the valley below. Could that monster be Chaos? It was composed of water, but it was so much larger and more terrible. This wasn't the Chaos Giga knew, if it was Chaos at all.

He looked around, and saw Tikal had scrambled to her feet and run to the shrine. Above the din he heard her shout, "The servers are the seven Chaos…" Then the great monster that seemed to be Chaos roared again, as though it were in pain, and Giga's head trauma caught up to him. He blacked out.

When he came to, everything was still, and deadly quiet. The only noise was the wind as it rustled the tree leaves. Nothing else stirred. The moon shone over the eerie scene. In its light Giga could make out a number of cocoons, and several lumps that were probably bodies. He didn't want to know for sure what they were. The shrine was partly demolished. Tikal might have been there still, but he couldn't tell in the dark at this distance. There was no sign of Chaos, or the Emeralds. No sign, until the a cloud shadow blocked the light of the moon and allowed him to see a faint green glow a short distance away. Was it an emerald? He stumbled over to find a gemstone. It was the same shape as an emerald, but far smaller than he remembered. It glowed with the same internal radiance, though. It called to him, as though he were meant to take it, shining with a light that didn't come from the moon. He picked it up. The world went white.

Giga awoke again, this time to a red gold sun piercing his eyelids. He stirred faintly. Had it all just been a dream? He sat up slowly and looked around. The hillside he was on was quite bare of any life besides himself, and looked nothing like Chaos' Shrine, or any of the nearby area. Morning mist hung heavy in the valley below him, but the sunrise was quickly melting it away. A moderate breeze was blowing. He shook his head and blinked quickly, both to clear the sleep haze from his mind and to adjust to the early morning glare. As the fog in his mind vanished so did any hope that it had just been a dream. It hadn't been a dream at all. It was a memory, had all happened a scant month ago, and now he remembered what had transpired in the interval. They had left the ruined shrine to find a new home. Tikal had survived, but Pachamac and Chaos, as well as the warriors that had attacked them, were gone. The Chao were left to wander, leaderless. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes. He would have given anything just to go back to sleep and wake up again to find he was just dreaming after all.

He remembered how he had awoken and stepped out of his cocoon, how Chaolon and Rusty had immediately bowed to him, how they had seemed so much smaller, and the shock he had felt when he looked down at his own body. He glanced down at his hands, watched the sun reflected in the green crystal that covered them, like it did the rest of his body. He looked like a freak, but somehow they thought that this, along with his newfound size and power, made him Chaos' chosen one.

The memories were still so recent as to be raw and painful so he tried thinking about the here and now instead, without much success. He wondered vaguely and irrelevantly when he had fallen asleep the night before and how long he had been unconscious, but decided almost immediately he didn't know and didn't care and went back to brooding over the events of the last three weeks. Fortunately this useless and circular train of thought didn't get very far before he was snapped back to the present by his best friend's voice.

"Hey, Giga, what are you doing up here?" yelled Spike, trudging up the hillside and flopping down beside him. Giga looked at him, and wished, not for the first time, that he could be more like Spike, could be a normal blue chao again instead of a giant green freak. He wished everything could be normal again, but he knew how vain a wish that was.

"I'm just watching the sun rise."

"When I left you were watching the stars. Have you been up here all night?"

"Yeah."

"What were you doing?"

"Thinking, mostly, and enjoying the view. The higher you go the better it gets."

"Thinking about what?"

"The same things you've been thinking about, the same things everyone has. Chaos, the echidnas… They attacked us for no reason! They destroyed our home! And did… who knows what to Chaos, and now he's gone. I was in a cocoon for a week and came out covered in green crystal to find I just missed getting given up for dead and left behind, and suddenly people are bowing to me because I'm green! They think I'm Chaos' chosen replacement! And here we are, without Chaos, without a home, and I don't know why and, and … how can you not think about it?"

""Because I don't have time to think about it. I'm too busy just surviving. Did you spend the whole night just thinking up here?"

"Not all of it, I fell asleep at some point."

"You go to sleep after I do and get up earlier. You barely seem to sleep at all anymore. It isn't normal."

"Neither am I! I was in a cocoon for a week, an entire week, after I touched Chaos' last emerald, and I think it's a part of me now. I've seen my reflection, Spike. I look like a monster, all covered in green crystal, with yellow eyes and these weird horns sprouting out of my head, not to mention the fact that suddenly I'm a head taller than everybody else. And because of it the others think I should be the leader."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I think you should."

"What? Are you crazy? That's part of why I spend so much time away from everyone else. I'm tired of being bowed to and addressed like I'm some kind of stranger. I'm tired of being looked at like I'm supposed to do something and make everything right. I can't deal with that, I can't even fix myself. I'm not a leader, I'm just another chao who happens to look like a freak. I don't care what they say, this isn't some special plan Chaos had for me. It was just an accident."

"How can you be sure of that? Ever since you came out of that cocoon you've been different. It's not just because you're bigger and covered in green crystal."

"I know, I know. I barely sleep, I barely eat, and somehow I'm never tired. So what if I'm suddenly a lot faster and stronger? That doesn't mean I can lead. I'm not any smarter than I was before. I don't understand what's happening or why any better than anyone else."

"That's not what the others…"

"I know what they think, Spike. I want to know what you think."

"I think you're still Giga, my best friend. You're still you, even if you don't look like you anymore. But I also think that doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter?"

"We need something to believe in, someone to follow. We're so used to having Chaos and now he's gone. We need a leader."

"I'm not…"

"It doesn't matter whether you think you're fit for the job or not, as long as everyone else believes you are. We need something to inspire us and give us hope, and I think you can do that much. Even if you don't think you can lead, you can still be… I don't know, a protector. For their sake, you should do it."

"It sounds like you've given this some thought. But every one knows I'm just doing it to make them feel better, what good is it going to do?"

"I'll know, and maybe a few others will. But if they have any sense they'll keep their mouths shut and let you do your job."

"Spike, I can't do this, I'm not Chaos. I can't pretend like I am. How can anybody believe in me when I don't even believe in myself?"

"You can lie."

"No, I can't."

"So what are you going to do, keep running away and hiding out on hilltops?"

"I'm not running from anything, Spike, I'm just going to tell them the truth."

Spike sighed, and then smiled slightly. "You realize that the ones who think you're some kind of savior aren't going to listen, and the ones like me who know you're still the fool you've always been aren't going to learn anything new?"

"Yeah, thanks for telling me that. Come on; let's get back to the others. Which way are we going today?" He got up and started walking down the hill. Spike followed.

"Where do you think we should go?"

"It isn't up to me to decide."

"But if it were?"

"I'd head towards the sunrise."

"Giga, if we did that we'd wind up on the coast."

"See? This is why I can't lead. I'm no good at making decisions."

"Well, you'd better start paying attention and figure it out, because someday you might be asked to. Someday you might not have a choice."

"Spike…"

"Look, nobody is going to make you take charge today, but I really think you ought to think about it. And that means opening your eyes and paying attention to what goes on around you. You can't keep living in your own head. For everybody else, you've got to quit daydreaming and focus on your surroundings."

"Spike, if you've got it all figured out, why don't you take charge?"

"Because I can't inspire them. I'll do everything I can to help you make the right decisions, but they need someone to look up to, and that's got to be you. I'm only meant to be your advisor, to fill you in on the important details. Here, I'll start with where we're going since you seem to have missed the meeting. We're heading the only direction that's really left to us. South, towards the mountains."

"Thanks. I'll think about what you said."

"Do more than think. Act on it. But while we're waiting for that to happen, I'm going to take my own advice and act on finding something to eat. You hungry?"


	2. Chapter 2

Authors Notes: Do not adjust your computer monitor, you are viewing the correct story (assuming you mean to view Age of Chaos) We've just jumped to our other protagonist. If the switch in perspective throws you, please bear with us for a few chapters, you'll soon get used to alternating between the two.

Fade ran. He followed his friend and mentor, Tetrax Ayvell, without knowing exactly where they were going. His chest heaved, and sweat dripped down his brow as they crossed small hills and through dense underbrush. They would need to stop soon, yet did not dare to for fear of what would happen to them. They ran for their lives to escape the wrath of the Daru.

Finally they found a dense tree line that disguised a small clearing. The two fatigued warriors ducked in and collapsed, enjoying the momentary rest, and knowing that it would not last long.

Fade was a sleek, black hedgehog with little color variation on his entire body. He could blend into the faintest darkness, earning him the nickname "Shadowhog". Fade liked to play games in the dark. After all, Fade was blind. So whenever the children played in the darkness, Fade excelled.

He lived in the small hedgehog village of Taero, just a few miles from the border of Daru-Sanrein. His parents had died when he was young, and for the six years afterward the village as a whole raised him, moving him from home to home. However, that all changed when Tetrax Ayvell arrived.

Ayvell was a green hedgehog, with red highlights along his spines and red eyes. He was a warrior from somewhere in the north, who had arrived out of the blue one day, looking for work and shelter. For close to a month he worked odd jobs around town in exchange for food and a bed, until the village faced a potential tragedy. A saber-fanged tiger andaru, or lesser daru, a giant wild version of one of the mindless brutes used as hunting animals by the Medaru, or greater Daru, had wandered into the fields where the crops were grown. The four-legged beast stood nearly as tall as any of the villagers. A group of farmers tried to scare it off with their farming implements, but to no avail. The creature seemed intent on getting a meal.

It nearly killed a villager before Ayvell, leapt on its back with a pitchfork in tow. He stabbed the tool in between the shoulder blades, and held on for dear life as it tried to shake him off. With one hand he grasped the pitchfork and with the other he drew the knife he kept at his side and fended off the tiger's paws. Finally, the creature began to slow as it lost too much blood and died. Witnesses were awed by his skill, and Fade listened to their accounts in awe. It was also the last time anyone would see Ayvell use his knife.

After his performance, Taero asked Ayvell to stay on as it's official protector. While he wasn't sure that such a thing was strictly necessary, he noted that recent events in Daru-Sanrein were disconcerting. The village quickly accepted Ayvell in, more than they had before, whether any such threat was real or imagined, and he made a modest life for himself. However, he perplexed the other villagers when he took Fade, just a little over seven years old at this point, into his home. Ayvell claimed that he would be training a potential successor, but everyone else believed that he just had become smitten with Taero and needed another reason to stay. After all, what good would a blind boy be as a warrior?

Regardless, Fade now had a home, and a mentor to teach him to fight and to hone his mind and body. Within a few years, he was winning all the games, whether it was dark or not. This became the norm, as Fade excelled under Ayvell's tutelage. Not even the black shard from the sky could change that.

As the semi-official guardian of the town, Ayvell was asked to investigate the strange fiery object that landed a mile or so into the forest.

"This thing's huge!" Fade exclaimed, cautiously feeling the edge of a depression, part of a large area of disturbed earth and the broken brush. Something inside the crater was still smoking, releasing an acrid stench that burned his nostrils and made his blind eyes water.

"Be careful, we still do not exactly what is going on," Ayvell cautioned him. Fade nodded, just a little chastened at his exuberance.

Suddenly, however, he began to feel strange. He slid into the crater, drawn toward whatever lay inside, and he did not understand why. At the center of the crater rested a smoldering shard of what appeared to be some sort of smooth black stone. He moved closer intending to grab it. "Fade, stop!" he could hear Ayvell say, but it was too late.

It never actually touched his hand. Instead it seemed to dissolve into his palm. According to Ayvell it gave off a bright purple light. Regardless, it sank into Fade's hand, painfully searing itself into his skin, until it disappeared completely. Suddenly, Fade's world exploded in color.

Light danced everywhere: an endless flow of dancing light swam through the air, the ground, and greatest of all, through Fade and his mentor. Fade could now see, but not the same way everyone else could. He could see the thermal patterns of heat energy flowing through everything, from normal air currents to metabolic processes. But there was something else too: a distinctly different light source within both Ayvell and himself that he could not recognize. It was the brightest and most beautiful off all the lights, containing and ever-shifting myriad of colors. Then Fade passed out, his senses unable to process the continued assault.

Ayvell was able to help him refine this ability with time. Eventually, Fade could differentiate between different energy sources, and focus in on specific thermal patterns. He no longer needed to feel around in unfamiliar places; as long as it was not too cold, he could see and feel the ambient heat of his surroundings. Fade felt more enabled, more free, than he ever had in his life. In time, however, events would make Fade's unique ability even more valuable.

A party of daru showed up at Taero one day, intending to take the village and its farmland as their own. Apparently, they were having a harder time producing enough food for their burgeoning population. Their leader, a fierce lion medaru named King Dragmar of Lenra demanded that Taero grow food for the daru and build his new palace. When Fade first saw the massive lion, he was blown away: Dragmar had a similar energy signature to Fade's own, except that it was made of hues of only yellow and orange. It didn't take long for the source of the energy to become clear, as Dragmar drew a large glowing yellow emerald to intimidate the villagers.

Everyone expected Ayvell to fight back, but instead he simply calmly surrendered. The savage-looking guards escorted the healthy males to a camp a few miles away, next to the proposed palace site. When they were finally alone everyone, including Fade, was quite angry with their supposed protector. But they were quickly reassured, because Ayvell wasn't going to take this lying down. He seemed worried about the strange emerald, but he also promised that they would not let the Daru get away with their crimes without a fight.

Over the course of the next two months, Fade and his mentor watched the Daru. They took note of guard rotations, and any other possibility of escape. What they studied most, however, was the fire powder. The Daru used the flammable and explosive black powder to clear the land for construction. They also used it as one of their many threats of painful death.

Ayvell decided that destroying the fire powder all at once in one large event would be enough of a distraction to cover their escape. However, when it came time to light the powder, they found a battalion of guards waiting for them, because one of their own had sold them out to Dragmar in return for his freedom.

They were forced to flee, hastily and without any sort of credible organization. Fade couldn't be sure how many of the others were even alive. He wondered how much longer he would survive himself.

"Master Tet, what should we do?" he asked his mentor, who had been unusually quiet, even considering his normal stoic personality.

Ayvell clutched a red wound at his side. Fade knew that he had been wounded fleeing the Daru, but not this badly. "I fear there may not be a 'we' much longer, my young friend. If we continue together, I would only slow you down."

"No!" Fade said angrily. "I need you, because I can't do this alone, and I'm not leaving you to those filthy cats."

Ayvell sighed, and put his hand on the young hedgehog's shoulders. "Do not worry about the Daru, I will stop them myself." Seeing the obvious look of confusion on Fade's face, the old warrior continued.

"I've got a secret that gives me an advantage: the golden rings." This did little to relieve Fade's confusion. "They are a mystical energy source, very rare, and they are similar to the emerald that Dragmar wields. When touched, they can be absorbed into the body, where they can grant the user increased stamina and other physical abilities. That is how I am able to move so quickly and display such strength. I will use them now to delay the Daru long enough for you to escape."

"There has to be another way!" Fade yelled. "You're in condition to fight. Golden rings or not, they'll slaughter you."

"It is true that I will not be able to defeat them, but I will allow you to flee. Someday you will return, stronger than I am now, and defeat Dragmar."

Suddenly Ayvell's color began to change. Instead of normal thermal patterns, he began to exhibit the strange shifting light that dominated Fade and Dragmar's signatures. He tried to stand and quickly collapsed with a pained groan. Fade helped him lie back down, realizing that even with the strength of the golden rings, this was the end for his mentor.

"Fade… remember that I picked you for your potential as a warrior, but that I loved you like a son…"

As his mentor's eyes began to close, Fade reached out to him. As soon as they made contact, a change occurred. The light of the golden rings was magnified, and Fade could feel himself infused with their energy. Ayvell's light was drained into Fade, until he could not see his mentor at all. Ayvell's body was still there, Fade could feel it, but he could no longer see it.

And suddenly, Fade felt very confused. Strange memories and emotions clouded his mind. The military academy… Going to the theater with mother and father… Walking her home from the festival… Entering the military…. Fleeing home, never to return…

None of these things had ever happened to Fade, yet it felt as though they had. It suddenly dawned on him that like the black shard, he had somehow absorbed something of his mentor. With the power of the golden rings, Fade had also received Ayvell's memories, and perhaps more.

"Over here!" Fade heard a voice call out. "We've found one!" Survival instincts kicked in as he watched a party of Daru guards slowly march into the small clearing. They were all armed, primarily with spears, and were also well equipped with their rather intimidating claws and teeth. Their apparent leader, because he was so much larger than the rest, spoke.

"We have you surrounded spine-swine," he said, and then stopped. "Wait, you're the blind one!"

"Ha! Just come quietly and we won't hurt you then!" another said. "Maybe we should just off him now and save the trouble of bringing him in?" a third chimed in.

"Hm, yeah, it's not like this blind pup could be much use as a laborer anyway," the leader agreed. "Besides, I could go for some fun."

"No," Fade said, silently crying. He calmly grabbed his mentor's unsheathed knife, and prepared to fight.

"You aren't going to get very far with that pitiful little piece of iron kid." The other daru chuckled just a little bit. "Just give up and take what's coming to you."

"No," Fade said again, "I don't think so." He threw the knife, burying it in the base of the leader's neck, who fell to his knees with a scream, vainly attempting to staunch the growing flow of blood. Fade charged, grabbing the knife before the others could react, but not before the dying leader could seize his arm and fling him to the ground.

Fade recovered quickly, rolling to his feet. He faced the Daru leader, who wobbled on his feet and fell. The others did not know what to do at first.

"Well," said one, "kill him already!" They charged, and Fade's rage pushed him to meet them head-on. He managed to dodge one's attack only for another to catch him in the stomach with a punch and toss him a few feet away.

Winded, Fade managed to make it to his feet, his hatred for these Daru and what they have done to his home and his mentor giving him energy. He shook with rage, and could feel something happening to his right hand. It began to crystallize, into the same sort of black gemstone that comprised the shard from year's prior. Fade's lust for the Darus' blood took on physical form, as the tips of his fingers grew pointed, until his hand had become a weapon unto itself. And then he leapt at the nearest Daru.

With a blood-curdling yell, Fade buried both this new claws and Ayvell's knife into the chest of one, killing him almost instantly. Fade dropped to a crouch as the body fell, growling in preparation for his next kill. One of the remaining Daru came at Fayde with two small swords, swiping at the hedgehog as he nimbly back flipped out of harm's way.

The Daru pressed his attack, forcing Fade to juke left and right to avoid being skewered. Finally, Fade struck back, his claws being caught on a blade. The two parried back and forth, as they each stabbed and slashed at one another, neither one landing a hit, until the last guard attempted to catch Fade by surprise with his spear. Fade anticipated the attack, and grabbed one of the swordsmen's blades with his claws, throwing the Daru in front of his fellow's assault. The spear sank deep into the flesh, delivering a serious if not altogether fatal wound. Fade finished the wounded Daru off by driving both claws and knife into his sides.

Now there was only one foe left to finish. The last remaining guard removed his spear from his partner's flesh, and snarled with malice. Fade charged, barely dodging one stab, until he was caught with a swing and knocked to the ground. He had not even made it to his feet before he was forced to deftly block another stab with his claws. From his prone position he threw his knife, but the daru managed to dodge, as the knife merely grazed him and then fell to the ground.

Fade jumped to his feet and charged again, attempting to stab his foe. His claws became buried into the spear's shaft however, lodging them in tight. The Daru used this to his advantage, bashing the shaft against Fade's skull. Fade reacted quickly, pulling the spear out of his foe's grasp and flinging it away. The Daru responded with a vicious right hook, knocking Fayde to the ground.

Unfortunately, this gave the guard an opportunity, as he grabbed Fade from behind, pinning his arms to his side. Fade felt the wind being squeezed out of him as he desperately struggled against much larger and stronger Daru. He tried in vain to bring his claws around to stab his foe, to wriggle loose, to kick him, anything, all to no avail. His vision started to cloud, spots appearing before his eyes, and his head began to throb in pain. Finally, once he was sure that he done for, Fade passed out and awoke on the ground a few feet away.

As he regained his breath, Fade saw the Daru struggle back to his feet. Something had knocked the guard to the ground, and Fade could not tell what. Regardless, he wasn't about to let his newfound advantage go to waste. He charged, grabbing his knife along the way, and beheaded his foe with one mighty slash of his claws and knife together.

Fade watched the body fall to the ground and the head roll to a stop, coming to the realization that he had just killed four living beings. His claws formed back into his normal fingers, and the part of him that was still Fade was horrified at what he had done, but the part of him that was his fallen mentor was coldly stoic. There were no more tears now.

"You're the first. I'll come back for your king later." And with that, Fayde Ayvell, the Shadowhog of Taero, looked in vain for the body of his master, and could not find it. Ignoring the pain he felt, he left the dead to rot, and started on the short journey home.


	3. Chapter 3

Spike's quest for breakfast led them to a small stand of fruit trees at the edge of a thicket. Even on the smallest one, standing in the shadow of some of the much larger trees, the fruit hung well out of their reach from the ground. Giga allowed Spike to use him as a stepping stool to reach the lower branches and watched as he began to ascend the trunk. He pulled himself up to the lowest fruited branch and began shaking it. The fruits bobbed enticingly, but did not fall.

"Hey, Giga, get up here and give me a hand!" he called.

"Okay." Giga vaulted onto the tree without hesitation and scampered up to join Spike, nearly dislodging him in the process. He grabbed the branch and gave a mighty heave. It snapped with a sickening crack and he and Spike both lost their balance and toppled to the ground, to land with a thud.

"Ouch," Spike said as he got to his feet. "What did you do to it?"

"I, I just gave it a shake," Giga said, looking at the branch in his hand in bewilderment.

"You're a lot stronger than you realize," Spike said as he grabbed a fruit from the end of the branch and took a bite out of it.

"Yeah, I guess…"

"Look, I'm sorry to put all this on your shoulders. But everything I said is true. We've never had to worry about anything before, because Chaos was always there to protect us. He's gone now, and nobody knows how to cope without him. We need somebody to take charge. Giga, you were chosen to lead. Whether it was Chaos, or something else, I don't know. But even if was nothing more than random chance, you're the strongest now, and everyone thinks it's meant to be. It doesn't matter if it's destiny. As long as they think it is, it might as well be."

"If this is part of Chaos' plan, he's got a cruel sense of humor. If they consider me special, they're only going to be more disappointed when they realize I'm not. I'll try to be a protector, but I'm not going to make any promises, not when I don't have any idea what's out there. I'm not going to tell anyone I can keep them safe when I can't. I can't deal with that kind of responsibility."

"I understand. Come on, let's go back to the others." Spike tossed a fruit to Giga.

"I'm not sure I want to."

"What?"

"I think I'm going to scout ahead. I want to see those mountains."

"Giga, the nearest one is at least a two day hike away, maybe three."

"Maybe for you, but you're not nearly as fast as I am now, and you've got a mate and child to bring with you."

"Soul is a trooper. She's tougher than her father and her mother. Star isn't fond of fast travel, but she can manage," Spike said wryly. "I'm going to name my next one after you."

"I know Soul is tougher than you are, but I hope you're not planning on having another kid so soon."

"No, not while we're on the move."

"Good. Anyway, I'm going ahead."

"No you're not."

"What?"

"You're not going to run off and avoid everybody again today. You did that all yesterday. You can't keep doing that forever."

"That's exactly what I intend to do, and you can't stop me."

"No. You're right. I can't. But you have a responsibility to the others, to at least act like you care about their well being."

"Spike, you're starting to sound an awful lot like Gesper."

"Er, well, that's probably because I've been talking to him a lot lately."

"And you're getting your ideas from that old stick in the mud?"

"He's not- okay, he is an old stick in the mud, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about. Look, if you want to go check out the mountain, okay, but at least come back and see everybody before you go off again."

"Why? It's going to be the same as always. The younger ones will bicker for a while over where we're going, and finally the elders will get tired of it and tell them we're continuing in the same direction as yesterday, and the day before, because nobody has a better idea. And Dash will ask what I think, as though I have any answer at all, let alone a better one. And if he doesn't, someone else will. I'm tired of him and Rusty and Zack hanging all over me and following me around and watching every move I make like I'm suddenly going to turn into Chaos and tell them it was all a joke and we can go home now."

"You don't have to stay long. Just tell them where you're going."

"Can't you do that?"

"No. They need to hear it from you. Just convince them that you're scouting to protect them, not to get away from them."

"Fine," Giga grumbled. He followed Spike back through the brush to the clearing where the other chao were staying in silence. He arrived to find it emptier than expected, evidently several chao were still out searching for breakfast. Spike's daughter Soul was playing tag with three of the other younglings, Chaz, Cody, and Rascal, while Taz wrestled with Rover. Giga was glad to see them having fun. None of the young ones really understood the situation, and while the initial attack had terrified them and a few were prone to random bouts of crying, most were treating it as an adventure, which was good. Excitement would allow them to keep going far longer than despair.

Meanwhile, several of the older chao seemed to be arguing. Chaolon, his brother Chacron, and Proto stood opposite a group comprised of Misty, Melody, Echo, and Peaches. Gesper was looking on but didn't seem to be participating. He walked toward them, and the conversation cut off as they all turned to look at him. Giga felt acutely uncomfortable under the force of the combined stare. He glanced back, and felt a pang as he realized once again how separate and alone they made him feel. These were the people he had grown up with, but they treated him like he was someone different now, no longer part of the group. The more they did so, the more he came to believe and act like it, which only reinforced their behavior and widened the gap between them until he felt like he barely knew them.

"Hey guys, I uh…" he stammered "I'm going to go scout ahead today, see what it's like between here and the mountains."

Gesper looked at him knowingly, and Giga flinched slightly as their eyes met. Gesper frowned disapprovingly.

"Don't you think you should stay here with the rest of us in case there's trouble?" He asked, probingly.

"Nah!" said Dash, coming up from behind and startling Giga. Zack and Rusty weren't far behind him, Giga noticed as he turned around.

"Giga knows what he's doing. We'll be fine. Isn't that right?"

"Um, yeah, sure thing," Giga said, grateful for the approval but anxious to get away.

"I believe you know what's best," Misty said. "Don't let us down."

"I, I won't," Giga gulped. He turned to leave, walking as naturally as he could to avoid betraying his anxiousness to get away. Dash followed him.

"Hey Giga, can I come with you? I want to go exploring too."

"I'd prefer it if you stayed here, Dash. I need somebody to stay and watch over the others. Besides, I'm going to be covering a lot of ground."

"I can keep up!"

"I know you can, but you wouldn't have any time to rest, and I really would feel better if you were here with everybody else."

"Oh all right." Dash wandered off in the opposite direction. Giga kept his measured pace until he was out of sight of the clearing, then broke into a run. It felt good to be in motion, and as he gave over contemplation to the blissful single-mindedness of action, he felt like a weight had lifted from his shoulders. It was like he was outrunning his cares. He knew Spike was right, that he couldn't do this forever, but for now it felt extremely good simply to live in the moment.

He had had some time to adjust to his new abilities, but Giga was still impressed with the speed he could now manage when he ran flat out. More surprising was the fact that he could maintain a decent clip almost indefinitely now. He got tired eventually, but he never stayed winded for very long. He sped on, pausing to rest only occasionally, through the alternating savanna and forest that comprised the surrounding landscape as far as the eye could see. For the most part the trees never got thick enough to block out the sun, and he avoided the denser thicket growth and kept to the open areas where they were few and far between. Toward midday, he headed into the denser growth and located a fruit tree for lunch. Even with his reduced appetite, the constant running had set his stomach to grumbling. He swung up into the branches and grabbed a promising one. Remembering what had happened that morning, he gave it a yank. The branch tore loose, but this time Giga landed on his feet. He consumed the fruit with relish, and then resumed running.

What would happen if he just kept on going, never looked back, but kept running? He could do it. He was already far away. He sighed. In his heart he knew he couldn't. Spike was right; he owed it to them to try, at least. He could never fill Chaos' footprints, but he would try. He had agreed to that much. He would never have been able to forgive himself for running away.

The sun was setting as he reached the foot of the mountain. The breeze that had been with him off and on since morning had faded, and the only sound was the chirping of flickies as they settled into their nests for the night. He started up the slope. It was normal dirt and grass for most of the way up, just an unusually tall and steep hill, but towards the top it turned to rock. Gravel shifted and crunched under his feet as he clambered his way towards the top in the dying light. By the time he reached the top the sun had long since set and the stars were out. He decided to stay the night and watch the moon rise rather than go back to the Chao.

The Chao. Why was he thinking of them like that? He knew each of them personally, by name. He was one of them. So why was he thinking of them like a collective, one that he was not part of? Wherever he was, there was at least one Chao, right? Because, he thought, if he wasn't a Chao, then what in the world was he? Something else, obviously, but what else? No, he was still a Chao. He still looked like a Chao. At least, more so then he looked like anything else he'd seen, but then, there wasn't much out there that seemed to resemble him. He wasn't ready to be a race of one. He looked to the stars for some kind of answer, knowing he would find none. They were just pretty lights. Sometimes they appeared to make patterns, as though he could read them if he only understood the language, but in the end that's all they were.

Suddenly he felt more alone than he ever had in his life. He wished Spike were there with him, or even Dash. Anybody would have been preferable to being alone on the mountaintop. The wind had picked up again, he could hear it rustling in the trees, but because of his emerald hide could no longer feel it. He got up from his resting place, and then sat back down, resisting the desire to be somewhere, anywhere else. Going back to the others wouldn't change anything and he knew it, so what was the point in moving? He felt as alone with them as he did here. But there he could pretend like he belonged to the group still. He wasn't ready for this kind of solitude. He gave in. He ran back down the mountain, tripped once, skidded for several feet, got back up, and kept going. He didn't stop until he found the Chao again, which took all night. It was after dawn when he stumbled into the clearing where they had settled down, startling Spike, who was up and about early, as usual.

"Chaos, Giga! You scared me. What's wrong? You don't look so good."

"I don't feel so good, but I just need some sleep. I was up all night."

"Doing what?"

"Watching the stars again."

"Come off it, that's the same answer you give every time. What's so interesting that you spend so many nights staring off into space?"

"Did you ever feel like maybe all the answers are written up there, if only we knew how to look? Like they could tell the future?"

"No. What were you really doing?"

"I got all the way to the mountain. Then I got lonely, so I came back."

"Right, well, you don't really have time to sleep. Everyone else is getting up and ready to move."

The rest of the day was a blur to Giga, as he moved along in a daze, practically sleepwalking more often than not. When they finally settled down for the night he passed out almost immediately. He came awake in the predawn darkness, and watched the last stars fade from the sky as the sun rose. They reached the foot of the mountains that day, and decided to skirt them rather than attempt the climb, working their way around them through the forest at the base. Shortly after midday, the wind picked up and through a gap in the trees Giga spotted a massive, forbidding front of storm clouds rolling in with alarming speed. It wouldn't be long before they covered the sun. Premature twilight descended as they blotted out the light. Then the rain began. Huge thick drops splashed down, soaking everyone to the bone and falling almost hard enough to hurt, certainly hard enough for anyone dumb enough to look straight up. The drops rolled off Giga's emerald skin without harming or chilling him, but even so it was an unpleasant experience.

"Spike! We've got to get under thicker cover. Find a place where the trees provide more protection."

He and Spike directed the others to the biggest, leafiest trees they could find nearby, but even with the minimal window to the sky it was a miserable night. Drops continuously poured off branches to drench them. It slackened off sometime during the evening, but came back full force during the night and continued that way well into the next day. It never fully let up, but they spent a slightly drier second night there, and moved on the following day through only intermittent drizzle. The fourth day of rain began like the third, but a brief downpour forced them to find cover early. When it let up again the sky was almost clear and the sun showed through for the first time in days. They decided not to break camp, as they day was mostly spent and the weather had been fickle and nasty and looked like it might return to rain before long. It stayed sunny for two days, however. Giga's mood improved a trifle, but he remained glum throughout the respite. Spike did not ask him about taking charge for the duration, but then, everyone was miserable and there wasn't much Giga could do about rain.

The rain returned after two days. It started as a light drizzle, became a downpour, then broke off, but the sky did not entirely clear. Although a few odd patches of sunlight broke through they were quickly swallowed and reclaimed by swirling gray clouds, and the drizzle started once more. Giga was moping in the twilight, watching the clouds gather for another assault when Spike approached him.

"Giga, Dash and his buddies went up the mountain during the break in the rain to look for a cave to spend the night if the weather got worse again. That was a while ago and it's getting worse. The wind's picking up and it's starting to rain harder. I don't want them getting caught in a downpour up there where they're exposed."

Giga thought it would serve Dash right and might teach him a lesson, but he said

"Sure. Just show me which way they went."

He followed Spike's directions and headed up the mountain. Sure enough, the wind and rain were picking up. He was buffeted by both as he climbed, and the rain kept running into his eyes and making him curse. If Dash wasn't in trouble, he would be when Giga got there. It was difficult going, not exactly straight up, but steep enough that he was doing more climbing than walking. He climbed until he reached a nice, broad shelf of stable rocked, and looked around. There was no sign of Dash. Any tracks there might have been were washed away, at least to Giga's less than stellar tracking abilities. He looked up. It was hard to make out anything through the rain, but he thought he could see another ridge some distance above this one. He couldn't really tell, but there seemed to be some indents in it that might have been caves.

He started climbing again. The first few potential areas he passed were nothing more than shallow grooves in the rock. He looked up, hoping that as he got closer things would become clearer. Sure enough, as he went one dark spot he thought he had seen from the bottom grew darker and resolved into an opening above him, more than halfway up to the next ridge. Giga knew he could reach it easily, but for a normal Chao it was a long way up. He wondered how long it would have taken Dash to reach it. From the distance, he couldn't have gotten there long ago. He picked up his pace, both to find the troublemaker and because he didn't fancy staying out here any longer than necessary in this kind of weather, especially with it getting worse. The wind and rain made it a difficult climb, and he nearly slipped and fell twice on loose rock, forcing him to proceed more cautiously until he cleared the area. Finally, fifteen minutes after he first determined it was in fact a cave he pulled himself over the lip.

It was difficult to see in the dim light, but the sight that met his eyes was terrifying. A pair of large feline creatures, mostly visible as flashes of tooth and fang and striped back, nearly as tall at the shoulder as he was standing up, had something cornered in the back corner of the cave. It took Giga a second, but peering into the darkness made out Dash, Zack, and Rusty standing cornered on a high ledge, far off the floor, not large enough to hold all three and barely wide enough to stand on. Pillars of rock offered some protection, standing between the beasts and the ledge, forming a sort of natural cage. They clung to these life supports, trying to press themselves into corners formed between the pillars and the narrow ledge barely big enough to hold them, in constant danger of falling out, and unable to back up even the smallest distance further.

Giga rushed to interpose himself between the Chao and the beasts without thinking. They turned on him almost as soon as he entered the room. The first one to reach him pounced on him, raking its claws across his chest and puncturing the crystal. Blood welled in the deep cuts it left. It slammed him against a pillar, pinning his right arm with one huge paw, and opened its mouth to bite. Giga stared at death in the form of long gleaming fangs, and instinctively shoved his free arm into the open mouth. The pain was excruciating. He pulled his other arm free and punched it in the side of the head, then grabbed it by the throat as it raked his side again. He felt the life drain out of it and into him through his arms. It thrashed, powerfully at first, then more feebly. Giga held on for dear life, then let it go as he felt the death throes subside. He threw the body aside as it twitched its last, and the other one immediately tackled him. Giga threw up his uninjured arm, saving most of his face and his eyes from the claws by sheer reflex. He hit the ground with the monster on top of him and they rolled, scratching, kicking, punching biting, trying to gain an advantage. Finally Giga managed to establish a hold in the frantic confusion of the flailing maelstrom of teeth, fur and claws. The beast's struggles grew weaker, and then it stirred no more. Giga got to his feet, beaten, broken, dripping blood. He swayed, slipped on his own blood, and fell.

As he struggled to his feet a second time, a light appeared and he realized to his dismay that the cave continued much further back than he had realized. Worse, something was coming from the recesses. Around the corner he could see the edge of a filthy, tattered cloth hanging, colored much like the stone around it, but differentiated in that it was back lit and something was pushing it aside and coming through, bringing light with it and cursing. Giga's vision was blurry, sliding in and out of focus, but he identified it as an ancient, wrinkled male echidna, deep red, nearly brown, almost the color of dried blood. He wore dirty, ripped clothing that might have been green or brown when it was new and carried a freshly lit torch in one hand and a walking stick in his other. To Giga's red-rimmed battle vision, it was the face of the enemy.

The echidna hobbled closer using his cane to support his rheumatic frame, peering through milky eyes nearly blind with age. "Tasha! Pani! What the hell is wrong with you two? I heard you growling at each other earlier, but what's so important that you need to go fighting each other and wake me? You had better not be bickering over scraps, you stupid pashtuks!"

He paused as he got closer and spotted Giga standing over the bodies.

"Eh? Who're you? Tasha? Pani? What's wrong with you two?" When he got no response the echidna erupted.

"What have you done to my Tasha and Pani?! Answer me, you little gremlin!" He swung the torch at Giga, who yelled in surprise and pain as he narrowly avoided a face full of flame. The echidna swung the walking stick with surprising force for his frail frame, catching Giga between the eyes with a resounding thwack. Giga reeled, seeing stars. Old as the enemy was, Giga was in no condition to fight after the damage inflicted on him by "Tasha" and "Pani". He lashed out, and through blind luck rather than any sort of intent, broke the walking stick. The old echidna fell hard. As he struggled to rise Giga grabbed him by the arm and throat and sapped what little life there was left in the ancient frame. He dropped the echidna, and the crumpled body landed with a pitiful, sickening thud.

Giga turned to Dash, who had watched the entire scene with abject terror in his eyes and said "You're safe now." Then he blacked out.


	4. Chapter 4

Fayde knew that he wasn't going to get far as he was. He had no food or traveling supplies; he didn't even have his cloak to protect him from the weather. Besides, he was still angry and suicidal enough to risk sneaking in to Taero one more time before he left.

So even though the village was probably the first place that the Daru would think to look for him, Fayde decided that he could take the risk. In fact, he would be surprised if they were not already watching his home right now, expecting him to come back.

To make matters worse, Fayde felt just a little addle-brained. Every few minutes some piece of information would occur to him that he had no real reason to know. He was having trouble differentiating between what he truly knew and what had been inserted into his brain by whatever had happened to him in the forest.

Fayde crept between the homes in Taero, sticking to the shadows whenever possible. For the most part, the village was pretty dead, except for the occasional patrol of a pair of Daru guards. It was easy him to make it to the modest thatched-roof hut that he and Ayvell had shared. He was surprised to find that it was apparently unguarded. Perhaps Dragmar was assuming that Fayde could not be stupid enough to come back home, or perhaps enough of the others had gotten away that he wasn't being personally hunted.

Regardless of the reasons, Fayde was relieved to find the hut empty. He quickly made for his room, grabbing his dark black cloak (made especially for him) and his rucksack. He intended to fill it with whatever food left in the house that had not completely decayed since he had last lived here. He wanted to delay being forced to forage or steal his food, if possible. Unfortunately, the only edible thing he found was some hard, stale bread and a few pieces of vegetation that were almost compost, though Fayde did manage to find a small sack of coins that Tetrax had kept in his room which would subsidize the meager amount of food.

He was so intent on gathering supplies that he barely noticed the other figure that entered the hut. He quickly tensed, crouching in a corner, and readied his claws.

"Fayde?" asked a quiet young voice, "Are you in here?" Fayde recognized the voice; it belonged to a friend of his: Tym. Tym was light blue, with green eyes, and he was one of the few healthy males who were left at the village to grow food.

Fayde stood up, feeling at once both relieved and still tense. "Yeah, I'm here, but not for long."

"You're leaving?" Tym asked, the sadness in his voice evident. "What happened, anyway? We heard something about a commotion at the palace site, but that's about it."

"We staged an escape," Fayde said harshly, "and it failed. Everyone who participated is either recaptured, dead, or still running."

"I… I see. What about Master Ayvell? He had to at least of taken down a few of those filthy cats before they got him, right?"

Fayde winced. He was almost hoping that he wouldn't have to even talk about it. He tried to speak, starting and then stopping. Tym waited for a response.

After a pregnant silence, Fayde finally responded, his voice full of emotion. "Tet did the best that he could, but it wasn't enough, and that's why I need to go. I'll come back, once I'm stronger and more experienced. I will avenge Tet, and give Dragmar what he deserves."

"So…" said a third voice from the shadows, "one of the impertinent spine-swine has returned, confessing to his crimes no less." Fayde hadn't noticed the Daru guard come in; he was too distracted. It made him angry that he could be so stupid. "King Dragmar will be quite pleased when I bring in your head."

The muscular feline leapt at Fayde, a small spear in hand, but Fayde was faster than expected. He easily ducked and sidestepped, drawing his knife and baring his claws. The Daru quickly turned around and managed to catch Fayde with a backhand that sent him flying across the room.

The Daru cocked his arm back, preparing to throw his spear. However Tym tackled him, managing to knock off the guard's aim. The spear embedded itself into the wall next to Fayde as the Daru knocked Tym aside.

While the guard was still distracted, Fayde stood up and pried the spear from the wall. Though he had little actual experience with the weapon, he seemed to instantly know how to use it.

"Hey!" he yelled getting the guard's attention. "Forget about me?" The Daru turned away from Tym just in time for to be pierced with his own spear. The guard roared with pain, grabbing the spear-shaft to remove it from his abdomen. Fayde took the opportunity and used his claws to slash open the Daru's throat.

As the deceased feline fell to the ground, Fayde merely wiped the blood off of his claws, while Tym was considerably more affected.

"We just killed a guard," Tym said. "I mean, you did it, but I helped. We'll be executed for sure."

"No we won't," Fayde said. "If you can get back home while I leave, they'll probably just blame it on me."

"I don't know about all of this," Tym said worriedly. "I mean, what good do you really think you can do by leaving?"

"Better than staying here," Fayde replied rather curtly. "Staying would mean being put back to work, or more likely, being made an example of why we shouldn't try this sort of thing again. Maybe leaving won't do much good, but it's better than staying here and accomplishing nothing."

"You're different," Tym said mournfully. "You weren't like this before; you've changed."

"War changes people," Fayde said, painfully aware of just how he was changing. "Sometimes you either change or you die.

"Anyway, you need to get out of here. They'll probably just add this cat to the four I killed earlier, so you should be okay if you get out now. I promise… I will come back."

That seemed to be enough for Tym. "I… understand. Good luck Fayde." Fayde nodded, grabbed his things, and watched Tym leave, before running out himself. He saw Tym quickly make for his own home, checked to make sure that no guards were nearby, and then left himself.

As he exited Taero, the enormity of the mission Tetrax had left for him weighed down on his mind. Fayde was forced to push away his doubt and soldier on, concentrating on one step at a time, his first task was to simply survive until morning.

"Let us begin." Lord Hollen of Daia, a tall white tiger and head of the largest of the noble houses of Daru-Sanrein, spoke to an assembly of the heads of the noble houses. They met at the current quasi-capital of Daru-Sanrein; the Daru were mostly decentralized, so their leaders met in the home of the current monarch. That meant that they were assembled in the manor of House Lenra, in the dining room of King Dragmar. Hollen sat at one end of the table, the massive lion king himself at the other. Dragmar easily dwarfed all of them in size and strength, and his large mane made him appear even more impressive.

"Yes," said Lord Bern of Borh, a large tiger, "I am curious as to how our liege intends to rectify this situation."

"I agree," said Lady Aayla of Tallabon, a panther. "I am assuming that we will not be taking this situation lying down, correct?"

"I'm not sure that we should do much at all," said Lady Temma of Analandis, a lynx. "What harm can one escaped prisoner cause anyway?"

Dragmar growled. "Let one go free, and the rest will get ideas. We have to make sure that they don't try this again, and the only way to do that is to get the renegade and make an example of him."

"Again," said Lord Genjen of Kand, a cheetah, "how exactly do you intend to do that? All this talk of making an example means little without the escapee in our clutches."

"I am sending the Hunters," Dragmar said simply. The others were shocked; Dragmar had obviously struck a nerve.

"But…" said Lord Tenris of Deggan, a regal cougar, "that would be an unprecedented new use of the hunters. They aren't your police force."

"Why not?" Dragmar asked with an evil smile. "The way I see it, the renegade is just like prey. I plan to put out a bounty for him, but I would prefer it if our own people got to him first, and the Hunters would be perfect for such a task."

"It demeans the position they hold in our society, that's why!" Temma said. "Like Tenris said, they aren't your personal police force, and you shouldn't use them as such. Putting your pet whore in charge was one thing, but this is too much."

Dragmar stood up and brought his face close to Temma's. "I'm sorry Lady Temma, did I ask for your input or your approval? I am sending the Hunters, and that is the end of the discussion." And with that, Dragmar turned away and made for the door, stopping to face the council one last time.

"I know that it has been difficult adjusting to the new ways," he said sardonically, surveying the room. "Are there anymore objections?" The council was quiet. "I thought not."

Laena Teranshen, current head of the Hunters of Daru-Sanrein, waited outside the dining hall of House Lenra. Like Dragmar, she ascended to her leadership position rather recently. She hitched her career to his when he started campaigning for aggression against the Echidnas, assisting his rise to the throne and fighting for him, and was rewarded with her new job. She wasn't exactly loyal to his rule or anything like that; he was just the means to an end for her, and so far, her allegiance was paying off.

Suddenly the door opened and Dragmar strode out. Laena moved to walk with him towards the front entrance of the manor, but stopped when she realized that he was standing still. "Er… how did it go sir?" she asked.

"About as well as could be expected," he replied, crossing his arms and seemingly ignoring her flub. "Some of them, that brat Temma particularly, were hesitant about me sending you, but I talked her down. I think I scared her enough into shutting up for a few days at least." Laena noticed that he seemed to be talking fairly loudly, enough for the nobles to hear, most likely.

"Good; they will… adjust to the new order you've made. Is there anything else I need to know before we leave?"

"Yes," Dragmar answered. "We have determined that the one who escaped was the so-called warrior's charge, and that he may have killed as many as five guards, possibly up to four of them at once; we can't be sure."

"I will alert the others, and we will make sure that we do not underestimate this escaped prisoner."

"One last thing: the escapee is blind." Laena was shocked to hear that. "I want him back alive, not only to make an example of him, but also to find out exactly how he was able to kill my soldiers, or whether it was someone else. I will not tolerate this sort of indignity! Bring this spike-swine back alive; I want to interrogate him personally."

Laena bowed, just a little intimidated by Dragmar's anger. "I will not fail you, my lord."

"I know Laena," he said, making a point to ensure that the nobles could hear him, "because if you do, I'll kill you as an example instead."


	5. Chapter 5

When Giga regained consciousness, he was lying on his back staring up at a canopy of leaves, and it was still raining, as made obvious by the water dripping into his face. He sat up, and came face to face with Spike, who was staring at him. Most of the other chao were clustered behind him, peering anxiously at Giga, who felt just a little like a curiosity on display. He tried to speak, but only made some rasping noises. His throat felt raw. After a minute he tried again, and managed to get out

"Ugh… How long have I been out?"

"Three and a half days."

"What? I've been lying here for three days?" speaking was getting easier.

"You were in a cocoon for most of it. It just faded about half an hour ago. It was Star's turn to watch, and she came and got the rest of us. We've been waiting for you to wake up.

"Where's Dash? Are Zack and Rusty okay?"

"They're asleep at the moment. They've been watching you nonstop since you saved them. Do you want us to get them?"

"No, let them sleep. I should thank them for dragging me down the mountain."

"What?"

"After I passed out. It couldn't have been easy getting me back down."

"Giga, they didn't bring you back."

"What? Then how did I get here?"

"That's one of the things I've been meaning to ask you. Two hours after you went looking for Dash, there was a flash of light, and you sort of fell out of the sky looking like you were dead and went into a cocoon. Several hours later Dash and the other two finally made it back and told us what happened, but nobody could figure out how you got back. It seems like you vanished from the cave at most a few minutes before you appeared here."

"I have no more idea than you."

"I also want to know how you survived. They told us what happened up there, and according to Zack those things tore you to shreds. The little I saw of you before the cocoon formed suggests he wasn't exaggerating too much. I shouldn't be talking to you after the mauling those things gave you, you should be dead."

"I… I don't know how I survived myself."

"You're the chosen one," a voice from the crowd said. Giga identified the speaker as Stormy.

"Yes, the chosen one." Echo repeated, true to her namesake.

Before Giga could think of a reply, three shapes came hurtling out of the crowd and tackled him, bowling him over.

"Giga! You're okay!" Dash, Zack, and Rusty were awake, hugging him and trying to talk all at once.

"I'm so glad you're alive!"

"I thought you were a goner!"

"I thought WE were goners!"

"but then you showed up."

"And saved us!"

"That was incredible!"

"I thought those things were gonna kill you for sure."

"But you beat them!"

"How did you get so strong?"

"I told you guys," Dash said, disentangling himself from the pile and standing up. "He's the chosen one. He can win fights no other chao could dream of. He can do anything. Giga is invincible!"

"I guess…" said Giga, bemusedly "Maybe I am the chosen one after all. But don't make the mistake of thinking I'm invincible. I'm not. Those things nearly killed me."

"I was so worried when you disappeared that I'd gone and gotten you killed by my stupid mistakes, and when I got back and you were in a cocoon, and you didn't come out…" Dash said uncertainly.

"I'm alive, but please, be more careful in the future. I might not be so lucky next time."

"I will, I promise."

"Can I get something to eat?" Giga asked, realizing for the first time just how ravenously hungry he was. He smiled as at least a dozen chao rushed to find him some breakfast. Maybe these new powers weren't all bad.

He began to have doubts about whether his performance on the mountain had really been as spectacular as Dash claimed while he ate, however. Had he really done the right thing? Obviously, protecting his friends was right, but what about killing the animals? The old man? He had spoken to the creatures as though they were… his friends, and had attacked Giga for hurting them. Giga had been fighting in defense of his people, but did that make his actions right? The animals would have killed them if they had tried to leave, and they certainly attacked Giga first, but he still wasn't sure whether he had been justified.

"What are you looking so unhappy about, Mr. hero?" Spike asked, plopping down next to him.

"Was I really out for three days?"

"Yes. It would have been more convenient if you'd woken up yesterday. It was sunny for a good bit and we could have gotten some travel in."

"Well, sorry, I was nearly mauled to death saving Dash, but I really do apologize for causing you such terrible inconvenience."

"Quit trying to change the subject. What's bothering you, really?"

"The old man in the cave, the one I killed. It wasn't really his fault."

"Giga, he would have killed you if you had given him the chance. Look, I listened to Zack and Rusty's account, and you acted like a real hero. Those things tore you up, almost killed you. Think about how much that hurt, and then remember that they would have done it to Dash if you weren't there. Those three would have died if you hadn't been there. You saved their lives."

"At the cost of the old man and his friends! It was his home, and we were the invaders. They were just protecting him. You weren't there; you didn't hear him talking to them. Who am I to decide that's a fair trade?"

"Giga, he was an echidna. Remember why we're here in the first place? You did the right thing."

"He wasn't one of the ones who attacked us."

"Nevertheless, he was an enemy, and if you hadn't acted like you did, there would be four dead chao."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

Giga still wasn't totally convinced, but he let the conversation trail off and sat silently watching the leaves drip rainwater. The image of the old echidna continued to eat at him, even after the rain cleared and the sun came out. Finally Giga could stand it no more.

"I'm going back up to the cave." He told Spike.

"What?"

"I'm going back to the cave."

"Are you sure you want to do that? What if there are more creatures up there, more "friends" of his?"

"There were only the two. I'm sure of that. And even if there are more, I'll be fine."

"Giga, why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you going back? There's nothing up there to find."

"I'm going to tell him I'm sorry, and explain I was only trying to protect my friends."

"He's already dead, it's not going to do him any good. He's not in a place where he can hear you."

"I know that, but it still feels like something I should do, for me, if not for him."

"Be careful," was all Spike said.

"I will."

The ascent was much easier in daylight, without the wind and driving rain. Giga took his time, thinking about what he would say during the climb, and he was so lost in contemplation that he was at the cave lip before he realized it. He looked at the sun. It hadn't moved that much. He hadn't been climbing as long as he thought. He looked into the cave. It was just like it had been, although better lit, and it felt emptier.

The owners were still there. The bodies lay where he had left them, and they had begun to smell quiet badly as they decomposed. Giga ignored the stench, focusing on what he came to do so completely that his consciousness blocked it out. He had decided to speak in the echidna's own language, the usage of which was extremely unfamiliar to him. He had tried to speak it before, with Tikal, but the syllables were harsh and difficult to pronounce and made his throat raw. It took him a long time to form each word, and his throat hurt when he was done, though not nearly as much as he expected.

"I… I'm sorry…for killing you. I didn't… didn't mean to. I was just trying… to protect my friends, and… I know you were…doing the same thing…It wasn't right of me, but… I didn't have time to talk… I really wish I'd been able to… to do something, but Tasha and… Pani… were going to hurt them… My friends I mean… I know we were invading… your home, but we… didn't mean any harm, for what good that does…Tasha and Pani attacked, and I… I didn't have time to think… I just acted… I just didn't want them to hurt my friends… I'm sorry, this wasn't supposed to happen… I didn't mean to kill you, I swear… I hope you're in a happier place now, with Tasha and Pani… and I hope you can forgive me. We were both just trying to protect our friends… and it's not right that I should kill you to do that just because… because I'm stronger than you are… I'm sorry.

Giga sat down and cried. When he was done the cave felt even emptier, as though something had left it, but he knew it was just his imagination. It must have been the weight pressing down on his heart, a little of which had lifted. He decided to bury the bodies as he had once seen the echidnas do with one of their own. It was difficult work, finding loose rocks and rolling them over the corpses. Partway through his labors Dash appeared at the entrance to the cave.

"Hey Giga, what are you doing?"

"I'm saying goodbye, and apologizing for what we did. I was just protecting you, but we were in his house, and his friends were just protecting him from us."

"I still think you were really brave. You saved my life, Giga, how can that be a bad thing?"

"I don't know. Protecting you wasn't wrong, but killing him was. I don't think there was any other way I could have done it, but that doesn't make it right."

"I don't understand. He was an Echidna. They're the bad guys."

"I don't understand either. He was trying to hurt me, but I still don't feel like it was right to kill him. I swear that I'm going to learn how to speak his language properly so this never happens again. I thought it would feel good to kill an echidna, and on some level I'm proud that I can if I need to protect us from them again, but he was so old, and he didn't do anything wrong… Think about Tikal. She was nice, she tried to stop her father. They can't all be evil. There's at least one good one."

"What about the ones who attacked Chaos? They were evil, right?"

"Yes, I think they were evil. I know what they were doing was evil, even if they themselves weren't. Can you do evil things and not be evil yourself? I don't know, but they attacked us for no reason and if I run into echidnas like that I'll kill them in an instant if that's what it takes to stop them from hurting my friends, but I won't like doing it."

"I'm really sorry…"

"If you want to make it up to me, help me cover the bodies."

He and Dash worked until a setting sun was casting its red light directly into the cave. They were dirty and tired, but Giga felt like he'd accomplished something important. He stayed for a while after Dash left and placed a few more stones on top of the rocks to finish off the graves. The sun dipped out of sight as he placed the last few rocks, and it started to rain again, just a light drizzle, but fitting for Giga's mood, as though it were there to wash him clean.

"Goodbye." He said, before turning away and climbing out of the cave. He would learn to speak so he would never have to do this sort of thing again. He swore it.

The drizzle cleared up sometime during the night, and the next day was the first fully clear one they had had in some time. Giga still hadn't completely decided that he had acted like a hero in the cave, but everyone insisted that he had, and he was coming to believe them. Protecting his friends was the right thing to do, and he had done so to the best of his power. Wasn't that what he was supposed to do? The death had been unfortunate, but he'd had no other choice at the time. It wasn't his fault any more than it had been the echidna's, it was just an accident. He would only be at fault if he didn't make sure this sort of thing would never happen again, and he had no intention of living with that kind of guilt. The important thing was, none of his friends had been hurt, and he himself had recovered from the damage he received.

That still surprised him. He had been pretty sure he was dying in the cave, and well beyond the restorative capabilities of a regenerative cocoon. Even if he had survived, three days seemed like a short time to repair the kind of wounds that had been inflicted on him. That must be another of the traits he had received from Chaos' emerald, increased resistance to damage and the ability to recover from greater amounts of it.

The clear weather lasted for a few more days, and they made good progress. As usual, Giga spent most of his days off by himself, scouting ahead for trouble, but now he really was scouting rather than trying to get away from it all, and he developed a kind of routine pattern of checking back in every few hours. After the encounter in the cave he wanted to make absolutely sure they didn't run across a pack of beasts like Tasha and Pani. What had the old man called them, Tashtuks? He spent a lot of his time alone practicing how to speak Tikal's language, and found it was not as difficult as he had expected it would be. He wondered if that was due to the emerald as well. Whatever the reason, he quickly improved to the point where he felt he could speak to an echidna in his own tongue if the need ever arose again.

The rain came back after four clear days, but without the pounding downpours. Giga wasn't sure if he liked it or not. The wet suited his contemplative mood better, but it was less comfortable and harder to move in and perhaps even a bit more depressing than was healthy. When it was sunny out, though, he felt like the weather was being more cheerful than it had right to be. He was alive and well, but that didn't mean everything was right with the world. There were a number of things wrong. The weather, naturally, continued to not be a reflection of his own personal feelings most of the time, uncaring of what one little green chao thought it should be like. He decided he liked it best when it was gray and cloudy but not raining.

The rain lasted for two more days, then the sun returned to the sky. Although there were still plenty of scudding clouds, some gray, some white, some large enough to block the sun and others not, none of them dropped more rain over the following few days, although several seemed to promise they would.

His mood improved over the course of these days, as things settled into a routine and no further disasters were encountered. Giga still hadn't entirely accepted his role as guardian, but he was a lot more comfortable with it than he had been prior to the cave. He wasn't as powerless to help as he had believed himself, and Spike was right. As long as everyone believed he was their new protector, and he did his best to act the part, he might as well be, whether he was truly intended for the role or not. It wasn't like their belief in him did them any harm, so who was he to take that away from them. Even if he didn't completely believe he was the chosen one, he was strong enough to offer them some protection. Spike approved of this change in attitude, even if he didn't comment much on it, and Giga found he was able to meet Gesper's eyes for the first time in a while and even offer the old coot a grin.

However, something was bothering him, and he couldn't figure out what, which only bothered him more. It had started yesterday, and had been so faint that he hadn't noticed when it began, and had thought he was imagining it for some time after that. Something felt… out of place. Not like something was missing, or like something bad was going to happen, but like he was supposed to be somewhere that he wasn't. At least he had a good idea which direction it was. He felt like he was being tugged along by some invisible hand, and whenever he found himself staring off into space, it was always in the same direction. He had caught himself running far further out than his normal scouting runs took him just a less than an hour ago, and had resisted the urge to continue running rather than turn back.

"Don't you feel it?" he asked Spike, who was eating lunch with him.

"No, Giga, I don't feel it, as I've told you before."

"It's like we're supposed to go that way," he said, gesturing, "Do you think it's another one of my powers"

"Giga, I'm glad you're accepting your role and all, but I think you're taking this chosen one's powers thing a bit too far. You're starting to creep me out."

"Look, I don't even know exactly what I'm capable of. I don't think I'm the chosen one, but I do have a bunch of weird abilities, and for all I know this might be another one. Come on, I'm going to go check it out." Giga said as he finished his lunch and stood up.

"What about everybody else?"

"They'll be fine, we haven't seen anything that might cause trouble for days."

"Oh all right, but I don't like this. Hey, slow down! I can't keep up with you!" Spike yelled as Giga ran off.


	6. Chapter 6

Fayde wandered disconsolately through the relatively busy streets of Benyan, a fairly small town to the south of Daru-Sanrein. He had been here before, bringing trade crops with Tetrax. Back then it had been an adventure. Now, it was just another thing that reminded him of what had happened.

Fayde felt purposeless. He knew what he had to do, roughly, and that was to find a way to free his village from Dragmar's clutches. However, he had very little idea as to how to do that. He was frustrated, sad and angry. But most of all he felt alone, and the intermittent drizzling that dampened the town certainly did not help his spirits.

Even if he managed to survive and evade the soldiers and bounty hunters that Dragmar would undoubtedly send after him in the coming days and weeks, Fayde would be trapped on his solitary mission. And in the event that he couldn't get stronger, or raise an army or devise some other clever plan to defeat Dragmar, it meant that he could never go home and live. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it might be better for him to forget about Taero and start a new life. It seemed that Tetrax had done something similar, based on the bits and pieces of memories that Fayde had picked up so far. Every few minutes or so, it seemed, some new morsel of information would suddenly occur to him. He tried to shut out the memories, cursing them under his breath, and drawing a few odd looks from passersby.

Benyan was primarily a trading post; people from many neighboring regions used it as a stopover on their way to Daru-Sanrein or other lands, and it was made up of a collection of different species. In fact, there had been a few times already that Fayde had nearly caused a commotion when he saw groups of Daru merchants talking amongst themselves. He knew that they probably had little or nothing to do with events in Taero, but he hated them just the same. He had to restrain himself from trying to kill them right out in the open.

After meandering up and down the streets of the town for a while longer, he slipped into a deserted alleyway, leaned against a wall and sat down. He was exhausted, physically and mentally, but he could not bring himself to sleep, not while he was so emotionally disturbed, wet and uncomfortable. Instead, he was forced to dwell on the turn his life had taken, until he finally slipped unconscious.

Fayde awoke a few hours later, in the late afternoon, as the streets were considerably emptier and the sun was preparing to set. He stood up painfully, having been in the same position for far too long. The sleep made him feel, on the whole, a little better, but he was still in a dour mood as he sighed and discontentedly left the alley. He still wasn't sure about what his next major goal should be, so he set another short-term goal for himself: to get a meal. He had eaten most of the food he had brought the night before.

Fayde was now very glad that he had grabbed Tet's money, as he didn't have the energy to work for his food, at least not yet. And while he didn't particularly relish the thought of being in an inn full of much happier people, he still needed to eat. So he started walking in the direction of what he hoped was the nearest inn. Along the way he heard some shouting in the distance, and he wrapped himself deeper into his cloak and hoped that it had nothing to do with him.

He grumbled to himself as he walked, quietly expressing his frustration, and almost bringing himself to tears at the same time. However, as he entered the inn, he spotted something interesting. He could see the thermal signatures of the inn's patrons, of the fire and the food. However, standing out in contrast was a bluish shifting light that was brighter than any other single source. He gasped, because if he was right, he may have just stumbled onto the beginnings of his greater purpose.

He could hear snippets of conversation: "…something going on up in Sanrein, I hear. Them cats are brewin' trouble…" Fayde noted that word of the revolt was starting to trickle out, but he blocked out the rest of the conversation, because he was too busy looking at the source of the light. It poured out of a bundle on the floor, which lay across the room next to the feet of a Weasel leaning over one of the small tables, talking in hushed tones to a Fox. Fayde made his way over the closest empty table and sat down, attempting to hear what was being said without obviously eavesdropping. However, even with his advanced hearing, he could only catch so much without getting closer.

"…got something worth your time, all righ," the Weasel said. "You won't… …I've found. It's somethin' right special."

"I'll believe it when I see it," the Fox replied. "But consider… …intrigued. Tell me…"

"A gem. Bigger n' any… …seen b'fore. One bloke already tried to take it. Jus' got… …today!"

"Can we… … a meeting? I'd like… …inspect it."

"Course. Tonight? Room seven?"

"I'll be there."

The conversation confirmed what Fayde had already suspected: the Weasel was in possession of one of those strange gems that Dragmar possessed and had a strange connection to the rings that Tetrax had put so much faith in. That meant that the gems had some sort of power. Fayde knew what he had to do.

He would collect as many of these gems as he could and find a way to use their power to defeat Dragmar. He would give the lion tyrant a taste of his own medicine. And he would start with the gem in the Weasel's possession. But first, he had to figure out just how he was going to do that.

He continued strategizing as the Fox stood up and left the inn. The Weasel conferred with two companions of his for a while, both of whom were weasels as well. Fayde continued to listen to the conversation as best he was able, catching a few nonsensical snippets about little green monsters, but now that he had the most important information he began looking around the inn, sizing up the patrons and looking for anything that might inspire a plan to carry out the theft. Most of the occupants were fairly nondescript working types or less prosperous merchants. The wealthier ones went to nicer places, not so much because there was an overabundance of thieves as because they could afford more luxurious accommodations.

Memories of other bars, from other times drifted lazily through his mind. This wasn't the seediest place he'd ever… this wasn't the seediest place Tetrax had ever been, but it certainly wasn't the nicest. The furniture was solid, if a bit rough around the edges, and it smelled of stale alcohol. Overall it was a very normal, uninspiring place, filled with ordinary, uninspiring people. None of them… he did a double take. There, leaning against the far wall. He thought he'd imagined it, but the emerald in the weasel's possession wasn't the only source of blue in the room. There was another, much fainter presence. It was obscured by the emerald's radiance and the mass of warm bodies between him and the far side of the room, but someone over there had a blue aura. Fortunately, the person directly obscuring his line of sight got up to order another drink and he was able to get a better look.

The aura belonged to an eagle. He, no, she was tall and slender, with rather broad shoulders for a woman, although perhaps that was to be expected, given the huge wings tucked behind her against the wall. Fayde guessed that she was not much older than he was, but it was rather difficult to tell for someone who saw faces, and indeed entire bodies, as blurs of heat. Even more difficult for him to judge was where she was looking, except that her head was turned at slightly the wrong angle, giving him the distinct impression that she was watching the weasels rather intently.

He put the eagle with the strange aura out of his mind and refocused his attention on the trio as they got up to leave, apparently going to their room. He watched them go, noting which side of the upper hall room seven was on, and then decided to get himself that meal.

Fayde relished the food, and let himself almost enjoy the music and the atmosphere of the inn, because he felt emboldened now that he had a clearer plan in mind. There were still many details to iron out, but by focusing on the task at hand, Fayde managed to keep an eye on both the stairs and the eagle. He noted the comings and goings of the two cohorts, though the Weasel in charge stayed upstairs. He decided to let a few hours pass, so that once he made off with the gem, he would have the cover of night to hide his escape, if such a thing proved necessary.

Finally, he had steeled himself for the task, and was about to go upstairs, knock the Weasel out if need be, and steal the gem, when the Fox returned. Fayde had pretty much forgotten about the prospective buyer, but he decided that this might work into his plans after all.

He let the Fox go upstairs unhindered to begin the business negations, while Fayde quietly crept outside. He exited the inn and bathed himself in the darkness next to the outer wall and waited for the Fox to reappear with the gem, all the while growing inpatient as he yearned to begin his quest to free Taero. Each time the door opened, he prepared to lunge, only to find that it was not the Fox at all; his impatience made him reckless.

Finally, after about fifteen minutes, the Fox appeared. Once Fayde was sure that it was him, he charged, hitting his victim in the back of the head with his emerald hand, creating a sickening crack as the Fox fell to the ground unconscious. Fayde quickly grabbed the fox by the feet and dragged him into an alleyway. In his haste however, Fayde had not noticed that the Fox did not have the gem at all. He searched the unconscious form's clothing for any sign of it, but to no avail. Fayde cursed himself and looked back at the second floor of the inn, seeing the faint blue pulse of the gem through an open window, and sighed exasperatedly, making his way back to the entrance of the inn.

He crossed the still lively, but considerably quieter common room and quickly climbed the stairs. He waked down a hallway, counting doors as he went, until his count and sight confirmed that the gem was in fact in room seven. He opened the door without knocking and found the Weasel admiring his bauble.

"Ey!" the Weasel cried. "What're you doing here?"

"I'm taking the gem," Fayde replied.

"Oy don't think so." The Weasel protectively shied the gem away.

"I wasn't asking." Fayde quickly cocked back another vicious punch with his gemstone hand and hit the Weasel hard. He crumpled to the floor, dropping the gem.

"Gaaah! What'n bloody blazes y' think yer doin' ye bastard?!?"

"Sorry," Fayde said, hitting the Weasel again and knocking him out this time. Fayde noticed that the Weasel was bloodied and already swelling from where he had been hit. While Fayde knew that he had been loathe to inconvenience the Weasel as much as possible, he was stealing the gem after all, he also knew that on the whole, he didn't much care.

Shaking off his thoughts about the Weasel, Fayde stooped down and picked up the gem. Instantly he could feel its light and power somehow… permeate him. It was a strange sensation, and not altogether different than how he felt after merging with the black shard years ago.

Turning away from the unconscious Weasel, Fayde quickly left the room, went down the stairs and exited the inn, hiding the gem as best he could within his cloak. Outside, he silently relished his acquisition, though he vowed not to make so much of a mess next time. Along the way he noticed the two companions the Weasel had been with, and felt rather accomplished for slipping his prize away past them. He made it to the equivalent of a town square, really just the convergence of multiple streets, before he realized that he was being followed.


	7. Chapter 7

Earlier that day...

The further they went, the stronger the feeling became and the more certain Giga became in his conviction that this was the right choice. He had to go slowly so that Spike could keep up, which irked him slightly as he really wanted to get whatever this pull was taking him and find whatever he was supposed to find there. Still, he wanted Spike to see when he found it so he could prove he wasn't crazy. He also admitted to himself that he was glad to have someone to keep him company. He wasn't expecting trouble, and Spike wouldn't be much good in a fight, but he was another pair of eyes, and Giga's best friend besides. Just his presence counted for a lot.

He stopped sharply as his ears picked up an unusual sound, strange but at the same time familiar enough that he thought he should be able to place it. Spike ran into him.

"Oof, Giga, what-"

"Shh. Do you hear that?"

"No, I don't hear anything, what-"

"Shh. Listen closer." Giga could still just barely make it out, even in the silence.

Spike cocked his head to the side, and after a moment said "I still don't hear anything. Are you okay?"

"I still hear it. Let's get closer."

He moved in the direction the sound was coming from, listening intently, and trying to make as little noise as possible, so that he could hear. As he got closer to the source it became louder and clearer, until it was distinct enough for Giga to place it as voices. It wasn't ones he was familiar with, although that was hardly surprising; he wasn't likely to run into anyone he knew out here. He wasn't able to distinguish what they were saying, so he moved slowly closer, pushing aside the underbrush, until he could make out the words. Spike followed, a tad more cautiously, though that was perhaps due to the fact that Giga was so fixated on his goal that he was pushing things aside only long enough to slip past them, and Spike got hit in the face by a giant leaf, still wet from a shower that had missed the chao earlier in the day.

Giga stopped at the edge of a clearing peering out from under the leaves of a massive fern at the three creatures standing in it. He didn't have enough experience with races beside his own to know what they were, but they were about the same size as echidnas, and all appeared to be the same kind, although aside from their furry tails it was difficult to tell much about them since they were standing with their backs to him. Rounded ears and furry tails was about the extent of it. Aside from height and color, there wasn't much to distinguish them, although the one in the middle seemed to have fewer tears and stains on his faded red shirt, although his dull brown fur looked the worse for wear. Giga tried to remain as still as possible to avoid making noise and interrupting their conversation, and rather unnecessarily told Spike to shush when the latter came up and told him to watch where he was going.

"…lookit the size of this thing, we'll be rich!" the short one on the left with the gray, or maybe silver, fur said. Like the echidnas, they all stood a good bit taller than Giga, nearly twice his height even after the growth spurt, so short was a relative term.

"Can you believe it, a gemstone like this just lying in the middle of the forest? It's a miracle nobody's found it before. This place is pretty traveled, too." This came from the tallest one. He, for the voice sounded male, was a good bit taller than the other two, who stood at nearly the same height, and was the one standing in the middle. He appeared to be holding the object of their speculation in his hands. Giga couldn't see it because they were facing the wrong way and crowded too close together.

"Hah, with this it'll be full roasts every night at the tavern for a year!" The one on the right was taller than his light gray companion, but only by a hair. His fur was very dark gray, almost black, and seemed shiny in comparison to the other two.

"You idiots, we could buy a house with it and probably still have enough for full roasts and the best drink they've got for the rest of our lives," said the tall one, who seemed to be the leader of the group.

"Yeah. What're we going to do with it?" said shiny fur.

"What do you mean what're we going to do with it? We're going to sell it numbskull!" said the tall one, slapping him on the back of the skull. As he did so Giga caught a glimpse of pure, radiant blue in his other hand, and the breath caught in his throat as he thought he recognized the object. He continued staring intently, hoping to catch another glimpse and confirm his suspicion.

"Ow! I know that, but who, and how? We're not just going to walk into some shop and say look at this gem we got here, how much will you pay for it? Right?"

"What do you think we should do, auction it off?" Blue shirt asked. Giga had named the gray furred one blue shirt because he had already assigned fur color to Shiny fur and height as the tall one's distinguishing characteristic. He considered changing his name to whiny because he disliked the wheedling sound of Blue shirt's voice, but decided to stick with blue shirt.

"Of course not, you moron! We're going to pawn it off to Silias. That fat merchant will pay a pretty penny for it."

"But are we just gonna walk in there and demand the money?" Shiny fur asked.

"No, we're gonna tease him about it a bit. Describe it to him without showing it to him, get him drooling over it. Then we'll agree to meet him later, and bring the stone with us to show him. That way he'll have spent a while thinking about how much he wants it and pay more."

"What about Amatheus? Don't he specialize in these sorts of things? Couldn't we get more out of him than Silias?"

"Sure, if he were in town. But he's not. This time of year he's off with a caravan."

'No he's not, I saw him outside his house the other day."

"Well, if you're right he must've just got back, although I 'aven't got word of it yet, and we'll sell to him."

"Yeah, and maybe you can buy yourself a new pasha," Blue shirt sniggered, "Your Gusty's ribs are showing." He indicated something at the other edge of the clearing. Giga had been so intent on the three in the middle that he had failed to look at the rest of. Standing on the far side, and halfway obscured to Giga's view by the fern, stood and enormous white beast, twice as tall as the pair that had mauled him. Despite its imposing size, it appeared less threatening, partly due to a lack of claws and fangs, but mostly because of the sorry state of health it seemed to be in.

"Shuddup needle nose, you're looking pretty ragged yourself." Tall one said.

"Yeah, but my fur ain't falling out!"

"It doesn't matter, this beauty will make our fortune." The tall one held it up to let the light of the sun illuminate it, and Giga's suspicions were confirmed. In his hand the tall one held one of Chaos' emeralds, the blue one, a perfect gem, shining with its own internal blue fire.

Giga turned to Spike and whispered "That's Chaos's emerald, just like I thought it was! Now I know what was bringing me here! I'm going to go get it back!"

"How?" Spike whispered back "They've got it."

"I'm going to ask them to give it back."

"Are you sure that's going to work?"

"Of course it will. As Chaos' replacement, it belongs to me."

"They don't know that!"

"I'll explain it then. You wait here."

Giga ignored Spike's protestations, pushed him aside and deeper into the fern and stepped out into the clearing. For a split second his confidence in the speech training he'd given himself failed, and he faltered, but then he found his voice.

"Excuse me, that belongs to me."

The three creatures whirled around to stare at him, snarling in surprise. Shiny fur grabbed a pointy stick like the one the echidnas had hit Giga with from where it had been lying on the ground.

"And who are you?" Tall one asked, in a rather hostile fashion.

"I am Gigazubyte, leader of the chao and replacement for Chaos." Giga said, puffing up and trying to sound important. "That's his emerald you're holding."

"Oh izzit now?"

"Yes, and as his replacement it's technically mine now."

"Izzat so?"

"Well," Giga said, unsure of himself now, "Yes. Please give it back now."

"Oh, hoho, so he demands it back and now 'e's saying please. So polite, like that makes a difference. Should we give it back, boys?"

"Hmm, nah, I don't think so." Shiny fur said.

"Worrabout you, Riff? What do you think?"

"I dunno, he does look like it might belong to him." Blue shirt said.

"Phah, as if we'd listen to a shrimp like that." Tall one said. "Listen you, this emerald is ours now and we ain't givin' it back. Now scram, and we might not have to hurt you."

"If you won't give it back I'll take it from you!" Giga shouted, getting flustered.

"Hah, awfully bold little punk, ain't 'e?" Shiny fur snorted.

"He's brave, I'll give him that." Tall one said, "Stupid though. Gots more guts than sense. Shall we give him a beatin' to teach him not to try to take things that ain't his and be on our merry way?"

"I've got a better idea." Shiny fur said.

"Oh, and what's that?"

"Howsabout we catch him and take him with us? We can sell him to Amatheus along with the stone. He'd make an excellent pet, dontcha think? Talks and all."

"Good plan. Riff, grab him!"

Blue Shirt lunged at Giga and caught hold of him. Giga struggled futilely for a moment, and then slugged him hard in the nose. Blue shirt let go with a howl and dropped him, pushing him away in the process. Giga landed on his backside, and Blue shirt stumbled back several steps.

"Owowow!" he exclaimed.

"Give me back the emerald!" Giga said, getting to his feet.

"Ow, 'e 'it me id my node!" Blue Shirt wailed, and Shiny Fur stabbed at him with the stick. Giga rolled sideways, and it glanced off his arm and plunged into the earth, leaving a bloody but shallow gash. He grabbed the end of the stick, pulled it out of Shiny fur's hands, and used it to whack him across the legs.

"Ow!" Shiny fur grabbed it back, and began tugging on it. Giga tried to hold on but ultimately lost his grip. Shiny fur went over backwards in the mud with the stick clutched in his hands. Blue shirt came at Giga with something in his hand that looked like a big fang, but even shiner. Giga ducked, and roared in anger as the tip scraped across his back. The emerald belonged to him! And they wouldn't give it back! Giga raised his arm at Blue shirt, who was coming back for another pass. A brilliant beam of blue green light erupted from his hand and struck Blue shirt in the chest, flinging him back. Giga roared again and shot another beam at Shiny fur as he stood up. It tore the stick out of his hands as it knocked him down. Giga turned on Tall one, but Tall one was already running away with the emerald. He jumped on his Pasha and tore out of the clearing.

"I'm gettin' out of here!" he yelled in parting.

"Hey, dat cowad's runnin' away on us!" Blue shirt shouted, following as fast as he could on foot.

"Forget this, I'm not stayin' to fight this crazy thing!" Shiny fur yelled, and scrambled after Blue shirt. Giga was about to give chase when he heard Spike.

"Giga! What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna get the emerald back." Giga said, starting after them.

"They got away with it, it's long gone already." Spike shouted.

"No it isn't, I can catch them!"

"Are you crazy? There are three of them and you're hurt!"

"I'm getting Chaos' emerald back. I'll be fine. No more time to talk, they're getting away." Giga said as he reached the edge of the clearing and broke into a full run, leaving Spike far behind and out of earshot. He pursued Blue shirt and Shiny fur through the forest, tripping constantly but only slowing down to pick himself up. They weren't exactly difficult to follow. They made a lot of noise as they ran, and left a pretty clear trail. He could just see them up ahead, and every once in a while one of them would glance back and shout

"'E's still there! What is this thing, how's he keeping up with us? This is crazy! 'E's only half our size!"

He chased them out of the forest and across an open plain, but lost them in a field of incredibly tall grass, easily more than the height of the two he was chasing. He pushed his way through it, a difficult and time consuming task for one his size, and as he came out the other side he saw a sight that made him wide eyed with wonder. There were buildings, massive ones. He had seen them in the distance on the other side of the field of giant grass, but they had not seemed so massive and imposing then and he had been so focused on the pair in front of him that he had barely noticed them. Some of them stood more than ten times his height, and there were a lot. The buildings themselves made a sort of wall, with only a few open spaces between them. It was a city, he realized. The only other one he had ever seen was the echidnas'. This one had mostly wooden buildings with thatch roof instead of stone, interspersed with some tile, and the streets were not as smoothly paved, but it was definitely a city.

There were also a lot of people, one of whom was shouting at Giga and brandishing a fist at him. Something about playing in the corn and messing up the crop. He took a deep breath and ran into the city. He couldn't afford to lose his nerve and turn back now. Tall one had to be somewhere nearby; Giga could feel the emerald was close. He knew they were somewhere in the city. He scanned all the people he passed trying to spot Blue shirt or Shiny fur, without success, all the while moving toward the pull of the emerald. It seemed to be moving around, and not every street led in the direction he hoped it would. Unfortunately it was highly difficult for him to see, as the crowd was almost entirely taller than he was, with the exception of children. Worse still, he kept seeing people that looked like the ones he was chasing, and he spun around to double take so much his neck got sore. There were all types of people here, of several different kinds, none of which Giga could identify, but many of which resembled the echidnas. He made his way along, peering intently, oblivious to the stares everyone else was directing at him. Sights, sounds, and smells, assaulted him, most of which were unpleasant, particularly those in the last category. He wasn't used to this much external stimuli at once. Everywhere he looked there was movement, action, as people bustled too and fro on their daily business. Fur and clothing of every color he could imagine met his eyes. The noise was incredible. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and trying to be heard over the rest, particularly the ones in the stalls that lined the road. And the smells. Giga had never experienced so many smells packed together at once. Some of them were good, and smelled like tasty food. Many were not. The overall effect was somewhat nauseating when combined with the noise. Giga's head began to ache after an hour or so of exploration, and he became dizzy as the overhead sun baked down on him. He had already spent no small part of his day in pursuit of the emerald before he reached town, and had wandered it for an hour, and it looked like he might be here quite a bit longer.

Then he rounded a corner and spotted Blue shirt at the end of the street as the crowd parted, and his focus instantly blocked out everything else. He set off at a run hoping to get to the end before it closed again and he lost Blue shirt. He pushed people aside, ignoring the trail of shouts and curses in his wake. They kept getting in his way, and he kept running into legs and waists and knocking people over.

"Hey you! Get back here!" he shouted as he caught another glimpse of Blue shirt. Blue shirt looked up, saw him, and took off sprinting in the opposite direction. Giga cursed and picked up his pace, running into even more people. Blue shirt reached the end of the street and took off down a much smaller side street. Giga rounded the corner so fast that he slid into a cart that happened to pass in front of him, bounced off, and fell. He only made it a few more steps before he hit another person Blue Shirt shoved at him, who reeled back and crashed into a pottery stall. Pots went everywhere. Giga slipped on one that rolled under his feet, and slammed into the stall next door, knocking a bunch of fruit into the street. Ignoring the curses and swipes of the stalls owners, he took to the air and flew after Blue Shirt, too focused to even wonder why he actually had an easier time flying now, despite being considerably heavier. Dodging people was easier at just above head level, and he had nearly caught up when Blue Shirt pulled down a stack of cages full of plump flicky birds in his path, setting off an infernal squawking and causing him to crash into a wall. He got up only to run into one of the people getting out of the way of the falling cages. By this point Blue Shirt had almost reached the end of the street and escaped. Giga got up and ran, straight into the legs of another person. This one was wearing some very weird shiny metal clothing that he had seen the echidnas wear occasionally, and carrying another pointy stick. The man grabbed Giga and hoisted him off his feet.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, knocking people over, damaging market stalls and wreaking havoc?"

"He took my emerald!"

"Who?"

"Him!" Giga pointed, but Blue shirt was already out of sight. "You let him get away!" Giga started thrashing and kicking, trying to get away to continue the chase.

"Ouch! Watch it you! You don't get to cause all this damage because someone took something of yours, especially when I don't see anybody where you're pointing." He shook Giga as he spoke to get him to stop struggling.

"He took my emerald!"

Giga repeated his earlier maneuver and punched the man in the nose, who naturally let go and dropped him hard on the cobblestones.

"He attacked me! He attacked a city guard! Get him!" Suddenly people were trying to grab Giga. He ducked under the groping arms of a huge assailant and ran for his life. There was no way he could fight this many people. His height actually worked to his advantage here, as most people had to stoop to grab him. More than one attempted to grab him and ended up sailing over his head as he ducked and kept running. Furthermore, his build made it easy for him to bowl people over by running into their legs. It also made him difficult to spot in the crowd, somewhat counteracting his unique appearance. However, it also meant several of his longer legged purusers were faster than he was. He skidded out of the street the way had had come in with people right behind him and set off down the larger street, trying to remember which way he had come into the city. After a few seconds he realized it would probably be much smarter to take to the air.

His pursuers were hot on his heels now, and very nearly grabbed him and pulled him out of the air before he could gain enough height, but he slipped out of their reach and made it to the rooftops.

Once there it was easier to see where he was going. He ran along them until he reached the edge, only to realize that he had gotten completely turned around and was facing empty ground that quickly sloped away into the foot hills of another section of the mountain ridge they had been skirting for the last few weeks. The sun was still high in the sky, although well past midday by this point, and with the sky temporarily free of clouds, it was shining brightly enough that Giga had to shield his eyes from the glare reflecting off the peaks. He heard people shouting behind him as they climbed the ladders onto the roof and spotted him. He was out of time; they were coming up right behind him.

He looked over the edge, took a deep breath, jumped, and flew down. Instead of the sharp drop and hard landing he had expected due to his increased weight, he descended smoothly and landed lightly on his feet. He then sped around the city and ran into the tall grass, then spent a while in hiding until he was sure the shouting had all long faded and the ones after him had grown tired of the chase and headed home before he returned to the chao. By the time he felt it safe to move the sun was a burning red ball hanging low in the sky, casting long shadows, and the first stars had appeared in the descending twilight before he got back to Spike. He was very tired and more than a little frustrated.

"Are you okay? Did you get it back?" Spike asked, as he returned to where the chao had stopped for the night. Tree branches formed a natural roof above their heads, whispering quietly in the wind. The stars shown through the tiny gaps in the canopy.

"No, they got away. I got in a fight with a bunch of other people and had to run."

"Oh."

"But I know where they went. I'm going back for it when it gets darker."

"Are you crazy? No, I knew the answer to that one when you ran off after them the first time. You couldn't get it before and you barely got away, and now you're going back?"

"I know where they are."

"Giga, think for a second, what happens to us if you get yourself killed on this suicide mission?"

"I'll be fine. I know what I'm doing. I can get this back from them, I just need to get them without other people getting in the way."

"I pray to Chaos you're right, for both our sakes."

Giga waited a few hours, and then snuck back to the village. This time he concentrated on following just the emerald's pull rather than looking for Blue shirt or the other two. He would find them when he found it. He stuck to the shadows, avoiding the occasional man dressed like the one he had attacked as they walked back and forth with torches, spreading pools of light in front of them as they went. Giga didn't need another fight with them, so he stayed well clear of their paths and well out of the light of their torches. The pull eventually led him to a big wooden building. The light and noise spilling out of the holes in the wall, which were covered with something clear like water, but solid, told him there were a lot of people inside. When the street was clear he risked stepping into the light and standing on tiptoe to see through them. Just as he thought, the room inside was full of people, but none of them seemed to be the three he was looking for. He knew the emerald was in there, but he didn't know quite where. Previous experience told him walking in the door and asking them to hand it over wasn't going to work, and would in fact probably start a fight, and he couldn't sneak in, especially since he didn't know exactly where it was or how to get there and grab it, let alone get back out, without being seen. He sat down on a bench to think, and then, by some miracle, a black creature stepped out of the inn clutching his emerald.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"Give me my emerald," a voice from behind Fayde said.

"Hm?" he said, turning around to see what appeared to be a short spiky creature made out of, of all things, emerald that glowed just like one of the gems. "What, uh, did you just say?"

"The emerald belongs to me, and I want it back now please."

Fayde was a little stunned at first by the appearance of the creature, but he quickly regained his composure. "Uh-uh. I need this thing, and I'm not giving it up, especially not after the work I did to get it."

"Give it to me!" The creature lunged at him with surprising speed and very nearly caught him by surprise. It missed by inches as Fayde hastily sidestepped and kicked it in the back of the head, sending it sprawling on the cobblestones.

Fayde turned to run away, not wanting to risk a fight, particularly one with a glowing green rock gremlin over a stolen emerald in the middle of town, but was brought up short by a figure in his path. He realized after a moment that he had seen this person before. He was face-to-face with the eagle from the inn. He stumbled back a step. The road had been clear just a few seconds ago, where had she come from?

"You will give the emerald to me," she demanded imperiously, her aura pulsating a dangerous looking blue, "Neither of you know what you are dealing with."

"How many of you are there?!" Fayde asked exasperatedly, "Besides, how do you know what I do or do not know?"

"I know exactly what that is!" the spiky green creature added, getting up. "It's one of Chaos' Emeralds!"

"What it said," Fayde added, a bit perplexed by the creatures odd grammar, "A Chaos Emerald."

The Eagle was not mollified. "Knowing what it's called does not mean you know what it is, nor does it mean that you should be allowed to have it. The Chaos Emeralds are too powerful to remain in the hands of untrained amateurs, and so you should surrender it to someone who knows how to handle them."

"And I guess that's you?" the spiky thing asked. "I am Chaos' replacement, so that means that I should get his emeralds! It means that they belong to me!"

Fayde watched the two debate, not really understanding what they were talking about. As quietly as he could, he also started to edge away, until he thought that he had enough of a head start to perhaps get away. And then he ran.

"You are just a Chao!" the Eagle said. "And to entrust this sort of responsibility to you is… hey, wait!"

"He's getting away!" the spiky green creature yelled after Fayde as he rounded a corner.

Fayde was quite pleased with himself, as he was sure that he would soon be able to duck into an alley or something and disappear in the shadows.

"Come back here!" he heard the spiky green thing yell after him. It was much faster than it looked but not fast enough. Fayde pushed himself harder, dodging a couple of startled late night pedestrians, until some sort of explosion right next to him threw off his rhythm.

"What the hell was that?!" Fayde asked, looking around for the source, "Was that you?" he asked the spiky green creature as it drew closer and the aforementioned pedestrians screamed and ran.

"That was my, uh, explody beam thing!" the spiky green creature said. "Now stay and fight!"

"Fight that?" Fayde asked. "I don't think so!" He lunged forward and knocked the green thing onto its back, and then turned around and ran.

He ran as he heard the green thing yelling behind him. The only thing that could stop him this time was… "The Eagle." Somehow she had gotten ahead of him and cut him off.

"Your tactics are as vicious as they are futile." She commented, the command to surrender the emerald unspoken but unmistakable in the way she held out her hand.

Fayde ducked into an alley and kept running. This was getting very frustrating, to say the least. He also was not fond of the attention that this was drawing to him, not at all. The last thing he needed right now was to get implicated in some sort of incident just like this one. He took turns haphazardly, working his way toward the town borders and avoiding lighted areas as best he could. His pursuers followed doggedly, but he finally lost them in the maze of streets.

Finally Fayde managed to get outside of the town's limits, coming out near the Southern road. So far he saw no sign of his opponents. But that lasted perhaps five seconds, as he saw both the Eagle and the spike thing flying over the edge of the town after him.

He stopped for a moment, struck by the sheer impossibility of the green creature's wingless flight, and they overtook him.

"Stop running!" the spiky green thing said. "Give me the emerald!"

"Both of you will cease this foolishness and surrender it to me!" the Eagle said.

"Hey," Fayde said, "what about me? Isn't it possible that I might really need this for something?" The others stopped and looked at him as if they had not considered such a possibility. "Don't you at least care about why I want it?"

"I know I don't," said another voice from behind him. Fayde and the others all turned to see a purple, female Bat descend from the sky and land. "So all of you, hand over your emeralds now before I have to take them from you."

"Alaine!" the Eagle said. "What are you doing here?"

"The same thing you are, Aureolis." the Bat replied. "I happened to be in the area when I felt an Emerald nearby. I arrived to find you three fighting over it. Your little chase was amusing, so I followed along and allowed it to continue for a bit, but your ineptitude grows tiresome. And now," she added with a smirk, "I'm collecting emeralds from those unfit to have them. And seeing as I'm a guardian and you're a deserter, that includes your own."

"Why you-" the Eagle began before she was interrupted by the bat flicking a ball of red light into her midriff. It blossomed into an explosion and sent her sprawling.

"Save your breath," the Bat said. "I'm not going to waste my time listening to any of your rationalizations. You can throw down your emerald, or I can kill you and take it anyway!" She charged, faster than Fayde had ever seen a person move, faster than any person should be able to move, and delivered a vicious kick to the eagle's beak as the latter tried to stand.

"So be it," she said as the eagle slumped to the ground, "When I'm done with you I'll kill these two and collect the rest." That last statement more than anything decided Fayde's mind on whom to help. Apparently the green creature had reached the same conclusion, because it shot Alaine in the back with one of its beams. She staggered forward a step and spun around to face him

"Why you…!" she began, but before she could finish the sentence the eagle took advantage of her momentary distraction and blasted her in the back with what appeared to be red lightning. Fayde briefly contemplated what he had gotten himself into. Who were these people, and why could all of them throw lightning and fire around?

"You're all dead!" she snarled, sidestepping a second green beam with unearthly speed and grace. She felled the eagle, who had staggered to her feet, with a nasty punch to the solar plexus followed by an elbow to the back of the head, then dealt the green creature a blow that knocked it clean off its feet and sent it bouncing to the ground before turning on Fayde.

"Give me the emerald, boy!"

"Umm…" Fayde said, hesitating for a moment, as if thinking, and she took a step towards him. "Okay," he said, and lunged forward to punch her in the jaw with as much force as he could muster. She staggered backward, eyes wide in shock.

Fayde was prepared for the attack, having seen it used on the Eagle, but he still barely dodged the sphere of red light that exploded on the ground behind him, and he dropped the emerald in the process as it knocked him off his feet. Fortunately, she didn't have a chance to follow up the attack, because the green creature tackled her. Fayde didn't know exactly what it did, but from the way she screamed it must have been incredibly painful. They rolled across the ground as Alaine tried to dislodge the green creature and it struggled to hold on. Fayde drew his knife and felt the claws on his right hand extend.

Finally Alaine managed to free herself, leaving the green creature sprawled on the ground, but before she had fully gained her feet Fayde leapt on her. He slashed his claws across her face and stabbed down with his knife. He was aiming for her throat but she twisted aside and instead he drove it deep into her right shoulder. She screamed again and vanished in a burst of light.

"What did you do to her?" Fayde asked the spiky creature as it struggled to its feet. "It must have hurt."

"Uh," the spiky thing responded, "I don't feel so good." The green creature began to stand up, and spotted the emerald in the process. He wobbly bent down to grab it.

"Wait!" Fayde said. "What do you think you're doing?" But before he could be stopped, the spiky creature had grabbed the gem and something strange happened. It started to glow brighter and brighter until it disappeared completely. The spiky creature yelled in pain and then disappeared in another flash of light, very similar to the one that had consumed Bat.

"What the hell just happened?" Fayde asked angrily of nobody in particular, "Where did he go?"

"Not far, I think…amazing, truly amazing," the eagle said, sitting up and rubbing the back of her head, squinting blearily at the spot where the creature had vanished. Fayde was surprised to see her get up at all. The blow to her skull had seemed more than forceful enough to shatter bone.

Fayde walked over to her, brandishing his claws. "What was that all about? Where did they go? I want some answers."

The Eagle frowned at him. "Ask then, there's no need to threaten me."

"What did that thing do with the emerald, eat it?"

The Eagle laughed. "No," she replied, "Not exactly. It's more like he absorbed it. His species is able to sap energy from living creatures, that's what he did to Alaine. And I think that he has somehow gained the ability to do something similar with the emeralds."

Fayde didn't like the sound of that. "Can we get it back?"

The Eagle answered his question with one of her own. "Why do you want the emerald anyway?" He turned around to look at her, unsure whether it was wise to divulge his reasons. "You were right before," she elaborated, "I hadn't considered that you might need it for something."

"I do need it." He said, deciding to tell the truth but not the details, "I've got a tyrant to overthrow."

The Eagle's eyes widened. "Dragmar. You want to fight King Dragmar. You're from one of the villages that he's conquered, Taero I would imagine, since you're a Hedgehog."

Fayde was taken aback. "Y-yeah," he said nervously, angry with himself once again for being careless. He should have suspected that the tyrant in question would be recognized. "Why does it matter, anyway?"

"Well," she began, "I think we may be able to help one another then. You and the Chao," she saw the look of incomprehension on his face, "the green, spiky creature, both show … potential… Yes, this could be very interesting indeed."

"What are talking about?" Fayde asked warily. "What kind of… potential exactly?"

"Perhaps," the Eagle responded, "we can call a truce for a bit, at least until we can reconnect with the Chao, and we can talk, the three of us, about what happened?"

Fayde thought about this for a second. It certainly would not hurt him to have allies, if these two proved to be trustworthy. And they seemed to know much more about those mysterious gems than he did, so they would be useful in that capacity at least. He could use these two to further his goals quite nicely, if he played his cards right.

"Alright," he said, "I can live with that. So where do we start? Any idea where he might have gone?"

"Well," she said, "He's probably with his people now I would imagine."

"There are more of these guys?" Fayde asked.

"Not exactly," she replied. "Anyway, let's get going. There is much to discuss."

"Yes," he replied, "much."


	9. Chapter 9

Consciousness returned slowly to Gigazubyte. The bizarre sensation that permeated his entire frame was what finally alerted him to his awakened state. Unable to attribute a name to it, he groped blindly in the darkness for words to describe it. It wasn't pain exactly. He was sore all over and his head ached slightly, to be sure, but the feeling that was bothering him wasn't that of injury, or muscles stiff from exertion and awkward sleeping posture. Those were expected after the events of the previous day. Assuming it had been the previous day. He might well have been out for longer than that. It was a different kind of ache that perturbed him. It reminded him of the feeling he got when he fell asleep with his head on his arm and woke up with the arm all tingly, but his entire body felt like that now, and somehow, more so. He wondered if it was the after effects of the burning attack the winged creature had hit him with.

He opened his eyes to the green gold light of the midmorning sun filtering through the canopy of leaves above his head. It was several hours after dawn, but the sun appeared to still be some distance from its zenith. He blinked in confusion. The leaves were much closer to his face than they should have been. Then he realized there was a bush over his head. He sat up slowly, careful not to get his head caught in the branches. It did not surprise him to find Spike sitting beside him, fruit in hand.

"Morning," Giga said, yawning and stretching, and trying to ignore the feeling that seemed to be trying to itch him out of his skin. "How long have I been out?"

"Just for the night. You want something to eat?" Spike offered him a fruit.

"Yeah, thanks." Giga took it gratefully and greedily chomped into the juicy morsel.

"You grew again," Spike said. Giga stopped eating and looked down at himself. His hands did seem bigger than he remembered, and Spike definitely appeared smaller. He stood up, and the difference became much more apparent. The second emerald had not had as drastic effect on his body as the first, but it was still significant. He was taller, and the spikes on his head and the backs of his hands protruded more. He expected he was also faster and stronger than before, and he wondered if his crystal hide was any tougher.

A branch nearby snapped. The crunch of heavy footsteps, far heavier than any chao would make, reached Giga's ears. He looked up as the black creature from the night before entered the clearing. He looked like an echidna except for his coloring, and his odd, spiky head. What had the giant flicky called him? A hedge something. Hedgehog? Yes, that was it. Was he still after the emerald? Giga's anger mounted. The emeralds rightfully belonged to him; he would not give them up to some strange black hedgehog. He readied himself for another fight.

"You've got some visit…" Spike began, oblivious to the dangerous enemy approaching them.

"Spike, hide!" Giga shouted, pushing him to the ground to get him out of the line of fire.

"Wait, what?" Spike said as Giga charged toward his foe.

"What do you think you're doing here? The emerald belongs to me!" He shouted, charging the hedgehog, who nimbly sidestepped his headlong rush.

"Whoa, calm down, I…" he started to say, but Giga tackled him, and they both fell to the ground.

"You can't have it! I couldn't give it back if I wanted to," Giga shouted, slugging his opponent in the midriff

"Oof!" Okay, you can keep it! Get off of me!"

"You… what?" Giga said, halting mid-attack as he tried to understand this new turn of events.

"You can keep the emerald!"

"You're not going to try to take it from me?" Giga said, standing up and stepping back warily. He found it hard to believe that after all the effort the hedgehog had put into keeping it he was just giving up now.

"You're the one who attacked me over it, you little psychopath. I'm here to talk."

"About what?" Giga asked suspiciously.

"About working together," said a voice from behind him. Giga spun around to face the giant flicky from the night before. He prepared to attack. The flicky evidently noticed this, because she stepped back and held up a hand.

"Relax, we're not here to fight."

"I'm keeping the emerald," Giga said.

"I heard you before."

"You weren't listening when I told you that last night," Giga said, unwilling to be placated.

"I've had time to think about it since then, and I believe we can come to an agreement that will benefit all of us."

"What's there to agree about? Unless you mean to agree that the emeralds belong to me, but I don't see how that benefits you."

"No, that's not what I mean…" the flicky sighed. Giga raised his fists, anticipating a fight.

"Hear me out," she said, "I have… a proposition if you will. We all want the same thing, that is the Chaos Emeralds, and for similar reasons, so instead of fighting over them, why not team up and work together? My goals coincide with yours, and we can help each other accomplish them, something I know we're incapable of doing alone."

"What are you talking about?" Giga asked.

"You want to lead the Chao to a new home. I know where to find one."

"Really? Wait, how do you know that?"

"I know a great deal about things relating to the Chaos Emeralds." she said simply

"Fine. But what about him?" Giga asked, gesturing towards the hedgehog.

"What about him?" the flicky asked.

"Why is he joining us? You said your goals coincide with mine, but what about him? Do you two know each other?"

"No, but I want to see Dragmar unseated, and she's going to help," the hedgehog said.

"See who unwhat?"

"Dragmar is the Medaru lion tyrant who has subjugated Fayde's village, among others. We intended to see them freed," the flicky said.

"What's a tyrant, and for that matter, what does subjugated mean?"

The flicky sighed in exasperation. "Look, he's done some very bad things. In fact he's a big part of why that fool Pachacamac attacked your shrine and angered Chaos."

"Oh," Giga said. "I guess that makes sense. So you're going to show me to where we can find a new home, and then go beat Dragmar?"

"That's the basic plan."

"Well, if you want to just tell me where it is, I can take care of the Chao until we get there and we'll go pound this Dragmar jerk."

"If only it were that easy," the flicky said, shaking her head. "As it stands, we're no match for Dragmar. We need more emeralds and a lot more training before we're ready to face him. I can teach the two of you to harness the powers of Chaos, to some extent anyway. Certainly much better than you can currently. That won't be enough though. I know for a fact that Dragmar has in his possession items that nullify most Chaos attacks, and unfortunately I'm not much good at Chaos Augmentation."

"Hold on," Giga said, his head reeling, "slow down. I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You obviously know something. A good deal more than I would expect, in fact. Chaos Control is a rather advanced technique. I'll be very interested to see what you're capable of."

"Chaos Control?" Giga asked, utterly perplexed now, "What in the world is that?"

"That's the ability you use to teleport. How do you not know what it is?"

"You said you knew a lot about the emeralds," he said, searching for a topic he could understand. "Do know why I look like one now? Does it have anything to do with what you're talking about?"

"I'm almost certain it's related, but as to the exact how or why of your transformation, I can't say."

"Then I suppose you wouldn't know about this either," the black hedgehog said, pulling the glove off his right hand and displaying a fist made of solid crystal, deeper black even than the rest of him.

"No, I have no idea at all what that is. I'm not even sure if that's related to the Chaos Emeralds. I've never heard of a black one." The flicky said, sounding a bit irritated, although whether it was at the questions or her inability to answer them Giga couldn't say.

"It figures," the hedgehog said with a sigh, "What about that girl that attacked us last night? You still haven't told me what that was about, or how you two know each other."

"Alaine and I have… a history."

"A history?" the hedgehog asked quizzically.

"Yes, as fellow Chaos Controllers we've naturally met a few times in the past. We… don't agree on a lot of issues."

"That's putting it mildly," the hedgehog snorted.

"So do you know other people who can use the emeralds too?" Giga asked "Why don't you get them to help you with Dragmar?"

"I don't know how well that would work," the hedgehog said, "After all, Alaine tried to kill us over the emeralds. Hmph, come to think about it, is that how you knew about Dragmar too? Is he one of you?"

"Er…" the flicky stammered, "No, he's not one of us. He's an upstart, but I came to Daru-Sanrein because I heard about the trouble they were causing with their neighbors, both the Echidnas and the smaller villages they were subjugating. Since Dragmar was the one behind this, both as a general and then as a tyrant I learned as much about him as I could."

"What was that girl, Alaine, anyway?" Giga asked the flicky, "Was she a flicky? She had wings, but they didn't have feathers."

"A what?" she asked.

"A flicky bird, you know, wings, feathers, like you."

"Uh, I'm not a flicky bird."

"Then what are you?"

"I'm an Eagle."

"Oh. Was she a hedgehog?"

"Hedgehogs don't have wings," the hedgehog said.

"Are you sure? Some ants have wings and others don't." Giga responded.

"Yes, I'm sure. Hedgehogs aren't like ants. She was a bat."

"What about the guy you took the emerald from?"

"He was a weasel. How do you not know this stuff?"

"The children of Chaos have had very little contact with the world outside their home," the Eagle said. "How would he know about creatures he's never met before?"

"I suppose he wouldn't," the hedgehog said, "So I guess we're going to be answering a lot of questions. Anyway," he said, turning to Giga, "Aurleolis and I have introduced ourselves to each other, but I realized that we've been talking all this time and I don't even know your name. I'm Fayde, Fayde Ayvell."

"And I'm Aurleolis," the Eagle said.

"I'm Gigazubyte," Giga said. "Are you guys hungry? I haven't finished breakfast yet."


	10. Chapter 10

In the limited amount of time that Fayde had known Gigazubyte, he had come to the conclusion that the Chao was crazy. He was both naïve and bold at the same time, not to mention far too powerful for someone with his limited knowledge (and diminutive stature). But Fayde also had to admit that it was almost funny watching Aurelois trying to teach the little guy anything.

"I told you, I have no idea what you're talking about!" Gigazubyte yelled. "It's all gibberish to me!"

The three of them had holed themselves up in the closest thing they could find to a clearing. Some of the other Chao had followed, trying to see their leader do something amazing, and were standing at the edges of the clearing. They were still very wary of Fayde and Aureolis, but they seemed to be mostly okay as long as Gigazubyte was there too.

"But you've done it before!" Aureolis protested. "We saw you! Fayde! Back me up on this!"

"I saw him disappear all right, but I couldn't tell you what he did or how he did it any more than he seems to be able to," he said simply. "That's your job."

"Oh you're just as bad as he is!" Aureolis replied, shooting Fayde a glare. "Fine! Let's try something else then. Now, try to create another one of your beams."

"Oh, you mean those bolts, of, uh, whatsit?"

"Chaos Energy."

"What?"

"Chaos Energy," Aurleolis sighed, "You're creating them out of Chaos Energy. Now try another Chaos Bolt."

"What?" Giga repeated. It seemed to be one of his favorite words, "What does Chaos have to do with any of this stuff?" Fayde sighed internally. This was going nowhere fast.

"Your Chaos Energy bolts!" Aurleolis all but snarled in her frustration, "They're composed of Chaos Energy, you called it a 'bolt', I thought it was pretty obvious that you would call them 'Chaos Bolts'. Do I really need to explain how this works?"

"Um…" Giga thought for a moment, "yes?"

"Okay, fine," Aurleolis said, rubbing her temples, "Look, you use Chaos Energy to make the bolts, right? When you use the power of an emerald to create some sort of effect, either in the form of an attack, some sort of physical augmentation, or any other ability, it is generally called Chaos something, depending on what it does. Since…

"I think you're overestimating Giga's knowledge," Fayde said, "You might want to simplify the explanation

"Yeah, I didn't understand all of that," Gigazubyte said, "You're going too fast."

"Um…" Aurleolis hesitated, groping for words. There was something humorous, Fayde reflected, about the fact that she had an easier time explaining things in complicated terms than simpler ones.

"Okay," she continued after a moment's hesitation, "You create attacks out of Chaos Energy, right?"

"Like my Chaos Bolt." Giga said, his tone halfway between a question and a statement and unsure which to pick.

"Exactly. So because it's an attack created from Chaos Energy, it's a Chaos Attack."

"I'm using Chaos's energy to make these bolts?!" Giga asked, sounding horrified for no reason Fayde could fathom.

"Yes… oh!" Aurleolis said, apparently grasping the problem, "No, no, that's not what it means. I'm sorry, of course that would be confusing for you. I should have realized sooner," she laughed. Giga and Fayde both looked at her, entirely confused.

"I'm sorry," she said again, "Let me explain. Chaos Energy is what powers all these special abilities. Your guardian was named Chaos, but it's not his energy that we're using. It comes from the Chaos Force."

"Oh," Giga said, "Then why is it named after him?"

"It's not," Aurleolis replied, significantly cheerier now that she had resolved the difficulty in communication, "You've got it backwards, Chaos was named because of his connection with Chaos Energy not the other way around. And they're Chaos Emeralds, not Chaos' Emeralds."

"They are Chaos' Emeralds!" Giga said angrily. They weren't planning to start this nonsense again, were they? "He was their guardian, and they belong to him!"

"Yes, yes, okay," Aurleolis said soothingly, "That's not what I meant. The only thing I'm saying is that they were called Chaos Emeralds before he started guarding them. Now, can we get back to practicing?"

"Oh, okay," Gigazubyte said. "So you want me to use the, uh, Chaos Bolt then?" Aurleolis nodded.

"Here we go then," Gigazubyte said. Fayde made sure to back up just a bit, and also to do his best to watch Gigazubyte and figure out he did made his attack, if possible.

"Chaos Bolt!!" Gigazubyte cried. Immediately, one of Gigazubyte's beams of energy shot out from his hand, and struck a tree. When the smoke cleared, Fayde could just barely make out that a section of bark was missing, and a small chunk was taken out of the tree itself.

"Um, Giga," Aureolis said, "you don't actually have to say the name of the attack when you use it."

"What?" he asked. "Then why were you guys saying that I had to use it? I'm so confused."

"You only need the name if, well, now I don't know how to explain it exactly. Uh, Fayde some help?"

Fayde shrugged, trying to concentrate on what he had seen, running it over in his mind.

"Uh, let me put it this way," Aurleolis said, "You don't need to name it when you use it, just when you're telling someone else about it, so that they understand what you're talking about.

"But if I don't want to confuse people, shouldn't I tell them that it's my Bolt made out of Chaos Energy, which comes from the Chaos Force and not from Chaos?" Gigazubyte asked.

"No, you don't need to give everyone the full explanation every time you tell them about it. Just call it Chaos Bolt, and most people will understand what you mean."

"I didn't." Giga said, a trifle sullenly.

"Yes, but now that I've explained it to you once, if I said…" Aurleolis paused, gesturing vaguely in midair for an example.

Fayde stepped in to provide one for her. "If I said, Chaos Punch, for instance, you'd understand that I meant a punch enhanced with Chaos Energy and not something else, right?"

"I guess."

"Well, most people have already had this explained to them. Trust me, just call it Chaos Bolt. It's… traditional."

"Okay."

"Good," Aurleolis said, "Now I want to go back to trying Chaos Control. I really think that you could…"

"No thank you," Gigazubyte replied curtly. "We haven't gotten anywhere with that. I'm happy with just Chaos Bolt. Was that right?"

"Yes it was," Aureolis said.

"Alright! Anyway, I don't want to try that other thing anymore. Let's do something different."

"Okay," she said, "what should we do now?"

"Actually," Fayde said, "I was hoping that I could have a go."

"Well, I suppose you could, but you will only be able to do so much."

"I thought you said that I had potential?" Fayde asked.

"Yes, but without an emerald, you can't get very far."

"At least let me try."

"Okay, sure."

"I was watching Giga do his Bolt, and I think that I might be able to it too," he said. He had been watching very closely indeed, and while he wasn't sure he could replicate it, he felt he could do… something.

"Fayde, I don't think that's possible, each User-"

"Just let me try okay?" he asked, just a little annoyed. "It can't hurt to try."

"Okay, I'll be quiet," Aureolis said meekly.

"Thank you." Fayde breathed deeply, and tried to mimic what Gigazubyte had done. Fayde had seen him somehow shift some of the light, the energy from the emeralds, presumably, and collect it in his arm, until he pushed it out as a beam. Fayde didn't know if it would work for him, but he wanted to try anyway.

He looked down at his own light, and willed it to move. Amazingly enough, he could see it obey his command. He continued to shift it around, and he began to concentrate a portion of it in his right arm. He lifted his right arm and opened his hand. He forced the energy further until it was floating in front of his hand. Moving the energy became much harder now, almost as if it was resisting his control, and wanted to escape. He took another deep breath, and in one fluid action he both released and pushed the energy away from him.

A spear of energy shot forward at incredible speed and hit the tree that Gigazubyte had earlier. Fayde heard Aureolis gasp.

"How did…" she began to ask. "How did you do that?"

But Fayde had fallen away from reality.

"Ayvell!" his commander yelled at him. "Take a unit of troops and secure the hill!" They were on currently on one field of battle, but so far Tetrax and some others had been held back, away from the actual fighting.

"Yes, sir!" Fayde felt himself say in return. "Company Delta! You're with me. Let's get there before the enemy does, alright?" They charged away on Pashas, Fayde with his trusty spear at the ready, and a sword that he would draw if need be. He also had his knife too, but he hoped he wouldn't have to use it.

They rounded a corner and started climbing Gern Hill. Once at the top, they could see a unit of enemy soldiers rushing to meet them.

"You know what to do!" Fayde yelled. "Charge!" And Tetrax Ayvell once more led a unit of comrades, friends, into battle.

"I-I told you," Fayde said, coming back to the present, "I was watching Gigazubyte."

"You don't realize just how amazing that was," Aureolis said. "I've never seen anyone so young create an attack without an emerald, let alone on their first try after just watching someone else use a different one."

"I guess Giga and I are just prodigies then," Fayde said.

"I suppose so…" Aureolis said suspiciously.

"Hey Fayde?" Giga said.

"Yeah?"

"How could you watch me if you've got that thing over your eyes?"

Fayde winced, realizing that he should have guarded his words more carefully. "Uh, it was just a figure of speech, really. I can't actually watch you because I'm blind."

"Oh that's horrible!" Gigazubyte cried. "Not being able to see… that's really terrible."

"Thank you for the compassion," Fayde said dryly.

"I mean it!" Gigazubyte continued, oblivious to the sarcasm in Fayde's voice. "Not being able to enjoy the sunset, flowers, stars, or anything like that!"

"I know, Giga." Fayde was starting to get annoyed.

"I mean, I guess there could be worse things, but still-"

"Giga!" Fayde cried. "That's enough. I know it sucks. In fact, I would prefer not to be reminded of it so much."

"Oh," Gigazubyte said, taking the hint. "Sorry. Wait, what does a figure of speech mean?"

"Anyway," Aureolis said, changing the quite awkward topic of conversation, "what should we do now?"

"You ain't doin' nuffin' till I'ff got me gem back!" said a voice from the edge of the clearing. They turned to see the Weasel that Fayde had stolen the gem from yesterday, holding a small sword. His face was swollen from the beating Fayde had given him, which slurred his speech just a bit. How he had snuck up on them was anyone's guess, although admittedly Fayde had been rather distracted by the conversation, and he doubted Aurleolis and Giga were all that aware of their surroundings.

"Are you really stupid enough to try something after what I did to you?" Fayde asked, wondering at the weasel's courage. True, he had a big knife this time, but still, he was pretty stupid to be threatening the three of them by himself.

"We'ff got an ace up our sleafes this time!" the Weasel said triumphantly. "Lads, bring 'em up!" At that the Weasel's two companions appeared out of the thicket, each one holding a Chao in his arms at knifepoint. "Hostages."

"No!" Gigazubyte yelled. Before anyone else could react, he had disappeared and reappeared next to one of the two Weasels, whom he promptly dispatched with a crushing punch to the jaw, forcing the Weasel to drop his captive.

Aureolis quickly used some sort of nearly invisible energy technique to hit the other kidnapper, forcing him to also drop his Chao. With both hostages accounted for, Fayde rushed forward and caught the leader's sword in his emerald claws, disarming him.

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you now?" Fayde asked, slipping his knife out of its sheath with his left hand. "What possible reason would I have for letting you live?" The Weasel's eyes widened and he began to shake.

Be-because…" he stammered, "uh, I'ff got some information that cha might be innerested in!"

The weasel's compatriots sat up groggily. Giga punched his weasel in the head, hard enough to knock him out, and then tackled Aurleolis' weasel when he tried to run and began punching his lights out.

While Fayde had to admit that he had respect for that kind of devotion to one's people, he wasn't about to let his new companion go off the cuff.

"Giga, leave him alone!" Fayde said. "I want to hear what they have to say… Go on, Weasel."

"Um, ah…" the Weasel struggled for some piece of information that might save his skin.

"Well?" Fayde said, flexing his sharpened fingers ever-so-slightly. "I'm waiting…"

"Ah! Ah! No! Wait! I, uh…" Then something akin to comprehension crossed the Weasel's face. "You're the one they been talkin' about!"

"What?" Fayde asked.

"No one's said anythin' outright, but you hear enough whispers…"

"What are you talking about?" Fayde asked, narrowing his eyes behind the blindfold.

"Yer the one that caused the trouble up in Sanrein, aren't ya? I 'ear the Hunters are after you, and there might be a bounty out on ya soon enough." Fayde's hand started to drop, slowly, and the Weasel smiled.

Then Fayde regained his composure. "Sorry, wrong guy." Then he cocked his hand back preparing for a punch.

"No!" was all that the Weasel managed to get out before Fayde slugged him into unconsciousness once again.

He tossed the unconscious weasel into the brush roughly between the two Giga had knocked unconscious.

"We're leaving," he said. If the Hunters were on his trail, he really did not want to remain where he could so easily be found.

"What about them?!" Gigazubyte protested, pointing at the unconscious weasels, "We can't just leave them here, they threatened the chao! They-!"

"Giga!" Aureolis broke into his tirade. "What do you want us to do, kill them?" That really affected him.

"I, ah.... no. Let them go I guess," Gigazubyte said, dropping his head.

The two weasels that Giga had knocked out stirred faintly. Fayde kicked them in the ribs until they were awake.

"Take your leader and get out of here," he said to the dazed pair, "If you ever cross us again, you're all dead men, understand? Don't push my patience any farther."

The two Weasels took that as their cue, grabbed their fellow and left as fast as they could, hobbling ungracefully out of the clearing.

"Relax," he said to Giga as he watched them go, "They won't be dumb enough to try anything like that again, and even if they were we won't be staying here any longer."

Giga said nothing.

The quiet was broken, however, when the Chao started… well, Fayde wasn't sure what it was, but he thought that they might be cheering. Either way, Gigazubyte brightened up and walked over to join his people, who began to crowd around him.

"Uh, what's going on?" Fayde asked.

"I think that they're ecstatic because he saved them," Aureolis said. "I don't exactly speak Chao but I think that's the gist of it."

"They want to thank you for helping too!" Gigazubyte called to them. "Although they're still kind of scared of Fayde."

Fayde shrugged. "I'll take that. C'mon," he said to Aureolis, "let's go meet our adoring public."

**************************************************************************

The last bit of sunset red had just recently faded into the blue of twilight and the first stars were twinkling brightly in the sky when Laena Teranshen arrived in Benyan. It was a beautiful night, especially considering the rash of rainstorms that had been ravaging the skies around Daru-Sanrein for the last month, but she was hardly in the mood to appreciate it. The blind hedgehog, Fayde, had done a remarkably good job covering his trail. Such a good job, in fact, that Laena thought his blindness must be an act. After all, what sort of blind man could defeat four… well, not Hunters, certainly. Thugs with delusions of finesse was a better description, but nonetheless four armed men. What sort of blind man could move so quickly through wooded terrain without falling almost constantly? She frowned slightly, thinking about it. He'd had the sense to wade or swim a few miles down the river, too. That more than anything had cost her Hunters time, but they had recovered the trail, and it led here, right into Benyan.

"What're your orders?" Fermi, the largest of the Hunters asked in his rumbling growl of a voice. Daru tended as a whole to be taller and heavier than most other species, but the cougar was tall even for his kind, towering over her by several inches. Compared to Dragmar he was only of modest size, but then, the king dwarfed practically everyone.

"Split up," she said, turning to Hara, her lieutenant, "Hara, you take Gendzu." The lioness and the leopardess nodded. "Fermi, you go with Feyolin." The cougar bowed, the lynx just sniffed. "Shenner, you're with me." The panther inclined his head. "Make a brief sweep for any obvious clues, but he got here at least a day ahead of us, so don't waste too much time trying to sniff him out. It's getting dark, so meet back here in half an hour, and if we don't have any leads we'll get a room at an inn for the night. As long as he's lead us to the city we might as well sleep on real beds, and to camp out without raising suspicion we'd have to go back to the forest."

"What if we find the spike swine?" Feyolin asked, scowling.

"Mark him, but don't let him see you, and get the rest of us," Laena replied to the black banded lynx.

"Hmph," Feyolin snarled, and spit, the contortions in her face making the scar over her left eye appear more prominent than it really was, "He's only one spike swine, why not kill him where he stands?"

"That one spike swine is more than he seems," Shenner answered patiently, saving Laena from having to reprimand her subordinate "He killed four…"

"Bah, Erudgen wasn't worth a damn, and neither were any of his cronies."

"Be that as it may, he killed all four," Shenner continued. The panther had a way of sticking to his points without dismissing the other party's opinion. It made him a valuable comrade, even if he was getting a bit old for fighting. "Do you know why they died? They died because they underestimated him. Better to bring too many warriors to end him than not enough."

"Pah, fine," Feyolin responded, and they separated.

"Do you think we'll find anything?" Shenner asked as they walked through the streets.

Laena took her sweeping gaze off the city for a moment to look at him. She noticed that grey hairs seemed to have crept into his muzzle recently. "Not really. He's been pretty smart so far, so I doubt we're going to find him hanging out of a window here. I expect we won't find any information tonight, so we'll stay at one of the inns, and we'll start with asking the merchants in the morning. Hiding in the city makes it very hard for anyone to follow your tracks, but there's always someone who can be bribed or intimidated into blabbing."

"Mm, and what will we do when we find him?" Shenner asked. That they would find him was a foregone conclusion.

"That depends on where we find him. Dragmar wants him alive, and I'd like to avoid involving citizens in this. If we're lucky he'll skip town and we can ambush him then, but if he doesn't we'll have to drag him out. The other trade off to hiding is that you have nowhere to run."

"Heh, true enough."


	11. Chapter 11

Gigazubyte was very glad to have his new allies around, for several reasons. For one thing, he could protect the chao many times more effectively with their help than he could ever hope to alone. It was more than just having two more of himself. Giga had a very strong suspicion that he was the least powerful of the group, and while it was slightly depressing to think of himself as number three after being the most powerful around for the better part of the last two months, it was incredibly uplifting to be absolved of a lot of the responsibility of protecting the Chao, and to know that even if his strength weren't enough they would still be safe. Beyond that, Aurleolis also knew where they were going. Finally they were headed in the direction of a new home. They had been from the beginning, but just in the abstract, which basically amounted to wandering aimlessly. This was different, now they had a specific destination, which is why Giga had been eager to get moving as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, Aurleolis had insisted they spend some more time trying to learn how to use the Chaos Powers she was fruitlessly trying to teach them. Giga honestly didn't care; he was managing fine with just Chaos Bolt. However, she was not satisfied with that answer and demanded he remain and practice. To Giga's immense irritation, she refused to be persuaded by his efforts to convince her that this was a futile exercise.

"Come on, use Chaos Control. I know you can do it!" she exhorted him yet again.

"I can't!"

"I watched you do it!"

"I don't know how!" he cried

"It's how you hit the weasel earlier!"

"I don't know how I did that!"

"How can you perform Chaos Control without knowing how you did it?" She asked, rubbing her forehead.

"I have no idea." Giga said. He really didn't have any idea how he did what he did, but unlike Aurleolis he didn't really care. It worked when it needed to.

"Clearly you can activate it when you need to, when you or your friends are threatened. I just don't understand how it's possible to do it by instinct alone. By rights, you should be able to use it just by concentrating."

"If I can get it to work when I need it to, why do I have to learn how to use it when I don't?" he asked.

"Look, just visualize yourself over there," Aurleolis said, pointing to a spot on the far side of the clearing and completely ignoring his question.

"Visualize?" Giga asked. He had a feeling Aurleolis was getting tired of all his questions, but she should stop using words he didn't know if it was bothering her.

"Use your imagination, close your eyes and pretend you're standing over there."

Giga obediently did as told, feeling quite foolish.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Aurleolis asked after several seconds.

"I'm doing what you told me to!" Giga said, angrily. Her vague instructions were really beginning to irritate him.

"What? No, you're… oh, never mind, just open your eyes."

"Okay, I tried it and it didn't work. Can we go now?"

"No, we're not going anywhere until we figure this out."

"At the rate it's going, we could be here for years," Fayde said, leaning against a tree with arms and legs crossed.

"Oh don't you start too," Aurleolis said, "And don't think you're off the hook either. I still want to know how you can produce a spear without an emerald."

"I do too," he replied, "but I doubt we're going to learn."

"Why do I even have to know this?" Giga asked again.

"You need to know it so you can better protect the Chao," Aurleolis said.

"That's what you're here for!" Giga said. "You know how to do it, why do I have to also?"

"No, I'm here to teach you how to better do your job, not do it for you. I have other responsibilities, I can't stay and watch over the Chao forever."

"Fine!" Giga said, "We're leaving now."

"What?"

"We're leaving."

"No we're not. Not until I figure out what's going on with you two and how you're doing these things."

"You might not be," Giga said, "but we are."

"You don't know the way," Aurleolis said "I'm the only one who knows where we're going!"

"That hasn't stopped us before." Giga said, as he left the clearing. "Come on," he said to the Chao assembled at the edge, "we're leaving now." He pushed past them and didn't stop to see if they would follow. At least one of them did, because he had barely gotten out of sight of the clearing before he heard Spike behind him.

"Giga, this is a bad idea."

"I'm not going to stand around and let her shout at me for something I have no control over. If she's not going to help I'm going without her."

"You have no idea where it is!"

"I'll find it eventually."

"Stop being stubborn," Spike said, catching up and confronting him. "You have responsibilities. If she knows where we're going, you need to put up with her stupid demands for as long as it takes to get there. "

"No, I don't," Giga said, pushing Spike aside and continuing forward.

"You have to do what's best for your people, and that means even if it's annoying you have to let her boss you around, because she knows where we need to go and you don't."

Giga sighed. He knew Spike was right, but he didn't want to admit it.

"Fine," he said, after a long pause, "I'll do it, but I won't like it."

"I don't expect you to," Spike said, and Giga thought he detected just a trace of pity in Spike's voice. He turned around and headed back to the clearing.

"Okay, you're right," he said to Aurleolis, "I need your help, so I'll do what you say."

"I'm glad you've come to that conclusion," she said "Now-"

"Actually," Fayde interrupted, "I think he has a point. We really should get moving."

"We're not done trying to figure out-"

"I know we aren't," Fayde reasoned with her, "but we'll have a long time to work on it, and we can do that on the move. We're still much to close to Daru Sanrein for my liking. In case you forgot, there are liable to be bounty hunters on my trail in the near future, and I'm sure Dragmar's guards already are, so I'm anxious to be as far away from here as soon as possible."

"I guess that's true," Aurleolis said. "All right, fine, let's grab our things and head out."

"Can we get some lunch first?" Giga asked.

"Didn't we just eat a couple of hours ago?" Fayde asked him in reply.

"Yeah, but for some reason I'm really hungry again."

"The get something to eat," Aurleolis said, "but be quick about it."

They spent the rest of the day traveling, with Aurleolis leading them more or less in the same direction they had been going anyway. Giga got the feeling that both Fayde and Aurleolis were annoyed at the slow speed of the Chao. Fayde in particular seemed antsy to move faster, but there wasn't a lot they could do to increase the pace. Aurleolis spent much of the time lecturing Fayde on the workings of Chaos Powers. Fayde seemed genuinely interested in the whole thing, but Giga wasn't and he ignored them for the most part. They spent the night sleeping in the open, under the mercifully cloud free skies. Giga watched the stars. He had missed seeing them during the rainy days. At one point he thought he saw a shooting one, but it was gone so fast it might have been his imagination. He stayed up thinking until it was nearly dawn before drifting off to sleep.

When he woke in the morning, his head was foggy, as was to be expected after a night with almost no sleep, but other than that he felt wide awake. After scavenging a quick breakfast, they set out again. They made good time until lunch, when Aurleolis determined they would stop for a while and she would try to teach Fayde some new techniques. Giga decided to watch, if only because Aurleolis method of teaching him was demonstrating her own powers to see which he could copy. Giga had heard about them, but with the exception of the attack with which she had felled the weasel and in the fight with Alaine, most of which he had missed due to dodging Alaine's counterattacks, he had yet to see her use them.

Aurleolis led them to a ring of empty ground on a nearby barren hillside. Surrounding it were a few straggly bushes, a small, twisted dead tree, some stumps, and a few medium sized rocks. Giga didn't understand why she had picked such an ugly place at first, but then he realized these were all targets. "I'll start with Chaos Thunder," she said, "You've already seen that one, it's what I used on the weasel yesterday." Aurleolis raised a hand and pointed it at one of the bushes. The attack was almost invisible, leaving no more trace than a rippling distortion in the air as it passed, but the shrub was flattened and blown away, the few leaves that still clung to it ripped from the branches and tossed away.

"Hmm…" Fayde said, studying the attack, "let me see…" He stood still for a moment, and then pointed at another bush. Another spear of light shot from his hand. The effect was considerably less impressive. The bush shook and made a dry rattling noise, and a few leaves fell off.

"That was the same attack you did last time," Giga said.

"Yes, very observant of you," Fayde shot back, "I don't know why, but trying to imitate the thunder just got me the same Chaos Spear."

"It's impressive you can do anything without an emerald, but it is rather odd," Aurleolis said. "Here, let me try Chaos Hail."

Several dozen points of golden light formed around her head and shot forward to impact one of the rocks, knocking several gravel chips off the main stone and raising a small dust cloud. Again Fayde attempted to imitate it, and again he created another spear.

"Hmm, that's definitely odd," Aurleolis said, "That must be your signature attack."

"Signature attack?" Giga asked.

"Yes," she said. "Every Chaos User has one. It's generally the first attack they can do and the one they become most proficient with. Yours is probably Chaos Bolt."

"What's yours?" Fayde asked.

"Mine is Chaos Lightning," Aurleolis replied, and from her hand she released an attack that did in fact resemble the tremendous bolts of light that occasionally lit the storm clouds, albeit on a much smaller scale.

"It's not terribly powerful, but it's able to hit multiple people at a time and it tends to stun."

"Sounds fun," Fayde said.

"Har har," Aurleolis replied, although Giga thought she was more amused than she tried to sound, even if he didn't get the joke.

"Okay," she continued, "I've got one more thing I want to try, and then we can get moving again. This attack is different from the others. I don't really expect you'll be able to mimic it, but I think it's worth a try."

"Okay." Fayde said.

"You all might want to back up. Further, further. Get behind one of the rocks." Giga did as he was told, growing slightly nervous. Whatever she was about to do, it sounded dangerous. Aurleolis turned from her normal light brown to red for an instant, and then exploded in a flash of light. Giga dove for cover behind the rock. After a few seconds passed and it did not appear any more explosions would break the silence, he got to his feet. Aurleolis was standing in the middle of a scorched circle of earth, apparently unharmed. Giga looked uncertainly at Fayde, and noticed that he was standing stock still, trembling in place. Then he started to glow also. Giga threw himself down again, anticipating another explosion. Seconds passed, and there was a small pop. Giga got back up.

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Fayde said.

"We need to find another emerald," Aurleolis said. "I want to see what you're capable of with an actual power source."

"What did you just do anyway?" Giga asked.

"I'm not exactly sure," Fayde said, "but I think I'm going to call it Chaos Useless since it doesn't actually do anything."

"Once you have an emerald and some practice it won't be," Aurleolis said.


	12. Chapter 12

"So, Aureolis," Fayde began to ask.

"Yes?" she said, with just a hint of apprehension in her voice.

"Would there be a possibility that I could borrow your emerald to see what I can do with it?" he asked. "I mean, you said it yourself that you're interested in seeing what I could pull off."

"Uh… yes," she replied. "I think that we could do that, once we stop to make camp tonight."

Fayde, Aureolis, Gigazubyte and the Chao were making their way to what Aureolis claimed was a new home for the diminutive… well, Fayde didn't really know just how to classify them, so he was just still trying to find another term. And unfortunately for the long-legged Fayde and Aureolis, the Chao moved rather slowly. In fact, the two often had to walk at an agonizingly slow pace or continuously cycle between going on ahead and doubling back around.

And they were not alone. Though Gigazubyte was still a good bit shorter than either of them (horn included) he too was easily much faster than his brethren. So while he was not exactly raring to join the other two, he also often came and went from the main group.

Aureolis had been good about laying off Gigazubyte in regards to the Chaos Control issue. The last time she tried to bring it up, Gigazubyte pretended that she wasn't there and simply walked away, leaving Fayde listening to her angered ranting. She hadn't brought it up again since.

"Great," Fayde said. "I really want to see what I can do. I also wanted to ask you something though."

"Hm?"

"Yeah, it seems to me that you and Alaine are part of some group, am I right?"

"Uh, y-yeah…" she replied warily.

Fayde took note of her response, but decided not to mention it. "And all of you guys know how to use the emeralds?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Well, I want to know more about this group of yours. Who organizes you, what you do, that sort of thing."

"It's… well, it's complicated."

"Try me."

Aureolis looked at Fayde, seeming to think hard on what she was going to say. "Well, we belong to a sort of… loose order of Chaos Controllers."

"Guardians? Isn't that what Alaine said?"

"Yes, she did. That's what they're called, the Chaos Guardians."

"They? Aren't you one of them?" Fayde had a feeling that he might already know the answer to that, based on something Alaine had said, but he wanted to hear Aureolis admit it.

"Mostly…"

"What does that mean?"

"Well, I, uh, never technically finished my training, actually."

Bingo. "Really? Care to tell me why, if you don't mind?"

"Many reasons," she said simply, and turned away. "I'm going airborne, to scout around and make sure that we're still on track."

"Have fun," Fayde said, waiting for Aureolis to be out of earshot. "So, you're not as perfect as you seem, huh? Well, I guess I feel a little better about myself…." At the very least, Fayde took some small amount of pleasure in the idea that he wasn't the only one with a checkered past.

A few hours passed before the Chao decided to stop for the evening. They gathered near a copse of berry-laden shrubs, from which they gleefully consumed the fruit. Aureolis hadn't come down since she left Fayde earlier. He was almost worried that he had genuinely upset her, until she returned in much better spirits than she had been.

"Alright Fayde," she said fairly cheerfully as she landed, "let's give you a chance to do something."

"What are we doing?" Gigazubyte asked warily. "Because I told you already…"

"Yes, yes," Aureolis cut him off, "I know. Actually, I am going to lend Fayde my emerald so that we can see what he can do with a real power source. Hopefully he will get more than fizzles this time."

"Oh," Gigazubyte said, "that's cool. No more Chaos Useless, huh?"

"No," Fayde replied, "you're still here." Gigazubyte narrowed his eyes. "C'mon, I think I've got a good place to do this." The two followed Fayde as he walked a little ways into the forest, until they arrived at a relatively clear section.

"This will do nicely, I believe," Aureolis said. "Now," she continued, drawing her light blue emerald, "let us see what you can do."

Fayde held out his hand and grabbed the proffered gem. Instantly he felt the flow of energy that he had experienced when holding the other emerald before. He had to admit that he liked it.

Fayde turned away from his comrades, and focused on a nearby tree. He decided to try for a beam attack first. He charged up energy the same way that he had before. He could feel it flow down his arm, felt the pressure build just like before, though it was significantly stronger this time, and then let loose.

Instantly a red shaft of light, much larger and more impressive than the previous one, flew from his hand and hit the tree. Despite knowing what was coming, Aureolis gasped again. This time instead of just singeing the bark, the beam sheared off a limb.

"That was great!" Aureolis said. "I mean, I knew that you should have been able to do that, considering your previous performance, but still, that was, well, it was impressive, frankly."

"Yeah," Gigazubyte added, "it's like the stealthy version of Chaos Bolt. What are you gonna call it?"

"Oh," Fayde said, "I hadn't thought about it actually. I guess, well…." Chaos Spear, a voice inside his mind whispered. "Chaos Spear. I think it fits, don't you?"

"Definitely," Gigazubyte said. "Wait, what's a spear?"

"A pole with sharp piece on the end," Aureolis answered him.

"What?!" Gigazubyte yelled. "I hate spears! That's what that echidna hit me with! You have to change the name."

"Um… no," Fayde said simply. "I already picked out the name, and I'm keeping it." Besides, it feels like there's a reason that I picked it, even if I don't know it. Yet. "How about you let me call it Chaos Spear if I stop calling you Chaos Useless?"

Gigazubyte seemed to consider this for a moment. "Okay, deal."

"Now," Aureolis began, "speaking of Chaos Useless… why don't you try out your radial attack again?"

"Oh yeah, sure," Fayde replied. "I'll give it a shot." Fayde thought back to the dismal radial attack he had pulled off before, and set about reproducing it. Instead of channeling energy into his arm, he concentrated a larger amount in his center, packing it in tightly.

"Giga," Aureolis said, "we might want to step back, just in case."

"You think so?"

"Probably."

Fayde barely noticed the other two backing away as he packed the energy in tighter and tighter. Finally, when he figured that he would not be able to condense the energy anymore, he let it go.

Immediately of red sphere of energy expanded out from Fayde, stretching to a diameter of almost ten feet before it stopped. Fayde felt himself leave the ground; he was suspended in the air at the exact center of the sphere. And just as suddenly, it disappeared, and Fayde fell back to the ground. Around Fayde's feet the brush had been almost entirely burnt away.

"That…" Gigazubyte began, "was… cool! And kinda scary."

"I agree…" Aureolis said, just a little shaken up. "That was… impressive, to say the least, and just a little bit intimidating; you should not be able to pull off something like that at this stage, at least not without hurting yourself. How do you feel?"

Fayde had to admit that he was feeling just a bit lightheaded. "Oh, I'ms fine. You know, I thinkss I'm gonna call it Chaos Buuuuuurrrss…." Fayde passed out and fell to the ground, while Gigazubyte and Aureolis stood in shocked silence, until Gigazubyte finally spoke.

"Well I'm not carrying him."

Laena was not happy, not at all. Oh, sure, she and her team had been able to find the trail of the runaway slave again, she was certainly happy about that. But they found his tracks with those of others… friends, or complications, as Laena thought of them.

If Fayde had been alone, it would have been easy enough just to get the drop on him before he had a chance to react, or at least to surround and overpower him. But the presence of those others just mucked things up,

"Haven't the forward scouts spotted them and come back yet?" Laena asked of nobody in particular. Judging by the tracks, the fugitive's party wasn't making great time.

"Not yet Captain," her lieutenant, Hara replied. "They should be due back soon though."

"Good," Laena said. "I need as much intel as we can get at this point; I don't want to go in blind."

"You need to relax," Hara said. "Look at the tracks. It's just a bloody spikeswine, a bird and some midgets; I think we can handle ourselves."

Laena didn't answer. The Hunters were all capable fighters and quite deserving of their title, and every last one had seen combat against the echidnas, but still, she had no desire to lead her group against anybody but the target himself.

"I suppose you're right," she said, relaxing with a sigh.

"Captain!" a voice called out from a few yards away. "Shenner's on 'is way in."

"Finally," Laena said. "It's about time." Along with Shenner the rest of the group closed in to hear what he had to say.

"Captain," Shenner said, "they've stopped for the night. I didn't dare get too close, too many eyes, but I did find out who his companions are, and you won't like it. One of them is the Eagle. You remember, the one who challenged Dragmar in his own throne room, knocked the guards out with lightning and threw Erudgen through a window, then vanished when she found out her magic couldn't hurt the king?"

"Really?" Laena asked, blanching, "You're sure?"

Shenner nodded. "I heard her showing her magic to hedgehog while the little blue creatures they travel with rested. Imps of hers, maybe.

"That's not good, not good at all. We don't need to face a magician now, or ever. If he's fallen in with her…" Laena paused, considering the ramifications, "Well, if we don't all die in the attempt, I suppose Dragmar would be pleased if we could drag her back as well."

"If you don't mind me pointing out the obvious, that's insane," Hara commented.

"No," Laena said, "there's nothing wrong with being honest, at least not around me."

"So," Hara began to ask, "what now?"

Laena stood in silence for a minute thinking, with her hunters awaiting her orders. "For now, we keep tailing them. There's no sense trying an attack right away. If we're lucky, they'll part ways with the hedgehog. More likely, we'll have to set an ambush and hope for the best."


	13. Chapter 13

"So…" Giga said, after a few awkward moments of staring at the unconscious Fayde, "How long do you think he'll be out?"

"Hard to say," Aurleolis replied, "He obviously over spent himself on that attack, but I don't know by how much he exceeded his tolerance. Probably not by too much, seeing as he retained consciousness long enough to form nearly a complete sentence. His breathing is nice and steady, so it shouldn't be too long…"

"How long is too long?" Giga asked, agitated at the thought of having to wait for days while Fayde slept off his mistake, or worse, carry him.

"I don't really know. I've heard of people sleeping for days after exerting themselves beyond their limits, but I don't think he has the focus yet to stay on his feet that far into energy debt, so it shouldn't take him nearly as long."

"Energy debt?" Giga asked. He couldn't help feeling that every question he asked just ended in him asking another question.

"Using the Chaos Emeralds requires concentration. Even though they make whoever uses them stronger, active use also wears that person out. Just like too much exercise can leave a person unable to move for a while, trying to do too much with an emerald can knock you out. Now, since an emerald can be used to bolster the strength of its controller well beyond normal limits, it's possible for an experienced wielder to keep supporting themselves on the emerald's power long after exhaustion should have claimed them. When they do that, or when they use too many attacks in too short a space of time, they put themselves in energy debt, which is where their body doesn't have the energy left to properly control the emerald. The longer they go in this state and the more energy they use, the more damaging it is to their body and the more likely they are to lose control of the emerald's power. It's very dangerous when an experienced user does it, and can end up killing them or causing other disastrous results. Fortunately, even though it happens to neophytes on a pretty frequent basis, they generally can't exceed their boundaries far enough to cause themselves permanent harm. Still, I'm a bit worried because they generally don't get to practice with real emeralds."

"Uh huh," Giga said, nodding as though he completely understood, which he did not, though he thought he had gotten the general gist of her lecture. "So that's what Fayde did?"

"Yes, but he should be fine. He doesn't have the experience to keep himself standing, much less manage attacks past him normal limits."

"Is that the same thing that happened to me when I picked up Chaos' emerald?"

"I think it was something similar, but as far as I know there's no precedent for an unmutated Chao absorbing an entire emerald, so I don't know for certain. You weren't actively using the energy, but being a Chao you seem to have bonded with the emerald much in the same way you absorb energy from other creatures. I would guess that your body shut down because it didn't have the energy tolerance to handle assimilating an emerald while you were conscious and so it went into hibernation to protect you. That being the case it's no wonder that you were knocked out. What I don't understand is how you managed to absorb something so far beyond your threshold in the first place."

"What does that all mean?" Giga asked, rather testily. All he wanted was a straight answer and he kept getting long-winded explanations that he only understood half of, if he was lucky.

"It means I don't really know what happened. You're a very special Chao and there's never been another like you, so you'll have to ask someone smarter than I if you want a solid answer. I can guess, and my guess is that, yes, it's like what happened to Fayde."

"So," Giga said, feeling not at all better for the explanation, having been reminded yet again of his unwanted uniqueness and trying to change the subject, "how long will he be out?"

"Ugh, were you even listening? I just told you I don't know!"

"Well I'm not carrying him," Giga said again.

"Yes, you've made your position clear. However, we aren't going to leave him lying here. We have to take him back sooner or later. The sun is going to set soon."

"Fine, fine," Giga grumbled, "we'll drag him back to camp."

The next morning dawned gray and misty. It wasn't quite raining; the damp didn't even really qualify as anything but the faintest of drizzles, certainly nothing like the storms from earlier in the month, but nevertheless unpleasant after several days of good clear weather.

The weather was not the only thing Giga found depressing upon awakening. Fayde was still asleep, snoring faintly where they had left him the night before, although he had rolled over at some point.

Giga began raiding the shrubs for his breakfast. Most of the easily reached branches in his immediate vicinity had been picked clean by the other Chao the day before, but there were a lot of shrubs, and he wasn't restricted to the easily reached branches. Sharp thorns kept the others from getting at the larger berries held deep in the bushes, but Giga plowed through them without suffering so much as a scratch. There were good parts to being one of a kind, he reminded himself, as he grabbed several large berries and stuffed them in his mouth. In his haste he forgot that his tongue was still vulnerable and carelessly stuffed an undistinguished jumble of berry, leaf, and vine into his mouth. He spat out the prickly, unpleasant mouthful and clawed at his tongue, trying to get the thorns out. His efforts only served to make him lose his balance, and he was soon tangled up to his horns in brambles, which is how Aurleolis found him.

"Has Fayde awakened yet?" she asked, shaking misty water droplets from her feathers, which accomplished practically nothing, as more damp from the air promptly replaced the drops thus scattered. "Giga? What are you doing in the bushes?"

"Jus' getting' bwekfust," he said, awkwardly lurching to his feet and tearing himself out of the tangled vines.

"Are you okay? What happened to your mouth?"

"Jus' twipped an' bi' my 'ounge," he lied. He struggled out of the bushes, managing thankfully to avoid tripping and falling flat on his face as he did so, if only just barely and sat down by Fayde.

"'E's still asleep," Giga said, spitting out a couple of thorns he had managed to get out of his tongue by rubbing it against the roof of his mouth. He walked over and prodded Fayde in the side a couple of times.

"Ouch! All right, cut it out, I'm awake!" Fayde said, smacking Giga's hand away before Giga could prod him again and sitting up. "What happened anyway? How long have I been out?"

"Well, you performed a Chaos Burst," Aurleolis said "but you charged it with energy beyond the limits of your threshold of tolerance and went into energy debt, which-"

"Short version," Fayde said, holding up a hand and putting the other to his head.

"Your attack used too much energy and you got knocked out. We dragged you back here and you've been asleep for a few hours," Giga said.

"Thank you."

"How do you feel?" Aurleolis asked anxiously.

"I'm okay. Still a little light headed, and everything tastes funny."

"That's probably because you fell asleep with your mouth open and you were using your gloves as a pillow," Aurleolis said.

"And I feel like I was dropped on a pile of rocks."

"That's probably because Giga dropped you."

"It wasn't my fault!" Giga said, "I tripped!"

"Well if that's the case, you could have at least let me sleep in," Fayde said. "We didn't go shaking you awake when you passed out."

"Only because she wouldn't let you," Giga said, pointing at Aurleolis.

"That's entirely beside the point; she didn't stop you from poking me."

"I didn't know he was going to do it," Aurleolis, a bit apologetically, but with a strong overtone of annoyance. "Now can we get a move on?"

The rest of the day was spent trudging along largely in soggy silence. Fayde and Aurleolis talked some between themselves, but they made little effort to include Giga in their conversation and he had little desire to join it. He didn't feel much like talking; rain dampened spirits more than it did skin in his case, especially when it picked up toward midday and became more of a solid drizzle and less of a mist. Aurleolis made no effort to teach them anything. She was apparently even less fond of the wet and not inclined to do much more beyond finding a relatively dry place to settle down for the night.

The next few days dawned bright and clear. The Chao made fairly good progress, drawing closer to their new home with every step. Aurleolis did not pester them to practice Chaos Powers, and in fact declined Fayde's request to have another try with her emerald.

"No, we've already seen what you can do with that, which is knock yourself unconcious. You need more practice, and for that you need a practice emerald."

"Yeah, I know, knocking myself out is a very handy skill to have. Bah, even with an emerald the attack is still useless. I just want to learn how I can make it do something without that inconvenient side effect," Fayde said, scuffing at the ground with his boot in frustration.

"For that you need to learn control, how to shape the attack so it doesn't use up such a tremendous amount of power in the execution. I'd let you keep trying with my emerald, but it wastes too much time to have you falling asleep for hours after every failed attempt, and it's none too healthy for you either. You're better off working on improving the little pop you create sans emerald until we can get you a practice one."

"What's a practice emerald anyway?" Giga asked.

"Certain guardians know how to create fake emeralds that mimic real ones, and can be used the same way, but function at a drastically reduced power rate so they're much easier to control. Students use them to practice their techniques without risking over exerting themselves."

"I see," Fayde said. "Did you come from some kind of school for guardians?"

"Uh, why do you ask?" Aurleolis asked, clearly ill at ease.

"You talk about students and practice emeralds like you've seen several. Sorry if I'm being nosy. Anyway, I have another question."

"Yes?"

"Is there any way to block these attacks? It seems to me like it would be pretty useful if we ran afoul of Alaine again."

"Yes, actually. There are several defensive techniques, although most are more difficult to manage than offensive ones. That's one of the benefits of learning how to teleport properly. If you can't block an attack you can at least get out of the way. Also, Guardians are generally more resilient to chaos attacks than normal people, and typically the stronger they are the more easily and completely they can absorb or deflect attacks. A strong enough guardian might not even bother raising a shield against an attack that would render a normal person unconscious or even dead. For example, I doubt anything I could do would even faze master Clawe."

"So in other words not only can someone like that rip us to shreds if they connect, we can barely hurt them in return. That's great," Fayde said, kicking at the dirt again.

"Who's Clawe anyway?" Giga asked.

"Clawe is the oldest and most powerful of the Guardians."

"Oh, neat. You should ask him for help when you go to fight Dragmar."

"I already tried that," Aurleolis said with a sigh.

"What did he say?" Fayde asked.

"He said no."

"Why?" asked Giga, annoyed that his perfectly good plan was ruined because their would-be ally was uncooperative.

"He would not say. Master Clawe can be quite inscrutable. His reasons are his own and more often than not remain that way. He is not prone to sharing and even when he does he is rarely understood. six hundred years of life can make a person seem quite insane to those with normal life spans."

"Whoa, back up," Fayde said, "did you say six hundred? That's impossible, there's no way anybody could live to be that old."

"The emeralds do more than just make their users stronger," Aurleolis said. "They also extend their life greatly."

"That doesn't sound possible," Fayde said. "But then, neither does the ability to shoot lightning from your hands. Anyway, if I need a practice emerald before I can work on my abilities, then we'll go get one, but in the meantime, let's focus on something we can do without needing extra equipment."

"What did you have in mind?" Aurleolis asked.

"I was thinking hand to hand combat. If our Chaos attacks aren't going to work on someone like Alaine anyway, let's work on attacks that will, and don't require an emerald just to use them in the first place."

"Physical combat isn't exactly my forte," Aurleolis said.

"All the more reason to work on it."

"Yeah," Giga said, "I like that plan."

"Do you even know anything about fighting?" Fayde asked, skeptically.

"Sure, punching and kicking, right?" Giga said, demonstrating his knowledge by throwing a couple of punches and a kick at an imaginary opponent.

"Right," Fayde said, still sounding unconvinced.

"Hmph," snorted Aurleolis, "I swear, any plan is a good plan to you as long as it doesn't involve trying to master Chaos Control."

"Pretty much," Giga said, grinning cheekily.

"Fine," Aurleolis said, throwing her hands in the air. "Have it your way, we'll work on hand to hand if it will make you feel better."

"Thanks," Fayde said. "Let's start slow, just a quick sparring match so I can see what I can teach you. I'm not exactly a master, but the guy who taught me how to fight knew what he was doing. You go first, just try to hit while I dodge and block, and once you've got the hang of it I'll start fighting back."

"Okay," Aurleolis said. She and Fayde faced off with each other, standing several feet apart, and began slowly circling. Giga watched with rapt attention. Was it his imagination, or was Aurleolis glowing ever so slightly? No, she was definitely glowing. Suddenly she lunged at Fayde with unbelievable swiftness, and threw a spinning kick at where his head was a split second before. Fayde ducked under it. Her next several strikes missed him by hair's breadths as he backpedaled furiously, giving ground as he dodged over, under, left and right through a blazing salvo of kicks and punches.

Finally Aurleolis caught his arm as he blocked a strike and twisted it behind his back. Fayde moved with the motion and managed to roll out of the hold, at the cost of being flipped onto his back. Aurleolis punched him hard in the ribs. Fayde rolled into a crouch and caught her leg as she tried to kick him, holding it against his side and leaving her standing rather awkwardly on one foot with the other leg almost fully extended. Aurleolis swung the leg Fayde was holding into the air, lifting him bodily off the ground and then slammed it down hard on top of him.

"Ow," Fayde coughed, lying on his back in the dirt. "What the hell was that? I thought you said physical attacks weren't your 'forte.'"

"They're not." Aurleolis said, brushing herself down. Rather surprisingly for one who had won so easily she was breathing hard from exertion.

"Then how did you lift me off the ground? That shouldn't be physically possible!"

"By using Chaos Augmentation."

"Which is what?

"Rather than creating a weapon out of chaos energy, I used it to boost my own speed and strength. Normally there's no possible way I could lift you with a single leg. Honestly though, you shouldn't have been able to catch my leg in the first place."

"What do you mean?"

"Whoever taught you to fight might have been very good, well, they must have been for you to be as good as you are. But I learned Chaos Augmentation from a master and there's no way a non-augmented fighter like you should be able to keep up with one enhancing themselves with the Chaos Force. Not if they were any good at it, anyway. I am nowhere near the level of the one who taught me. Against her, you would be knocked unconscious before you even saw her move."

"Wait, so not only are Chaos Guardians able to create these powerful energy attacks and shrug off the same, but they're also capable of becoming far faster and stronger than normal people? What are we supposed to do if we run into one?"

"I would strongly advise not running afoul of them in the first place, and then you won't have to worry about it," Aurleolis said.

"Too late for that: Alaine."

"Well thankfully Alaine is a relatively young Guardian and not that far beyond my own skill level. Besides, if she's attacking people without justification, she's liable to get herself branded a rogue, in which case the other Guardians will see to her."

"How young is relatively young compared to someone who's six hundred years old?" Fayde asked, "She seemed like she was only a few years older than I am. For that matter, how old are you?"

"Alaine is not quite ninety, and I am thirty seven."

"I never would have guessed," Fayde said. "I thought you were my age, maybe two or three years older, tops."

"And how old are you?"

"I'm only seventeen. You don't look a decade older than I am. In any event, I'd feel better about Alaine if I knew we could handle her ourselves rather than hoping the other Guardians will take care of her. They don't seem to have been terribly proactive in solving our other problems. As I recall it was Giga who made her leave. So, Giga, you want to show me what you know about fighting?" Fayde asked as he picked himself up and brushed the dirt off.

"Absolutely!" Giga said. He'd always enjoyed wrestling with the other Chao, and often won, but he had refrained since his transformation, partly because they were occupied with far more serious matters, and partly because he feared he would hurt them. He was a little intimidated by Fayde's size, and more importantly his speed, but after the weasels and Alaine, he was fairly certain he was capable of holding his own against creatures such as Fayde.

He faced Fayde as he had seen Aurleolis do, and charged. Fayde, having seen this before, sidestepped and kicked him in the back of the head. Giga skidded on his face in the dirt, rolled to his feet as Fayde leapt at him. Giga put his arms in front of his face and deflected Fayde's punch. Surprisingly little of the force of the attack translated to pain. Giga felt himself knocked backwards, but that was it. Fayde bounced off, shaking his hand in pain.

"Ow. Damn it, this is not my day, I keep underestimating people."

"Ha," Giga said. "Not bad, huh? I told you I knew what I was doing!"

"Well, you certainly taught me not to lead with my left," Fayde said. "But don't get cocky, you're not the only one with emerald hands!" With that, Fayde leapt forward and punched Giga squarely between the eyes with his right hand. Giga saw stars; the force of the punch sent him rolling backwards. Fayde didn't give him a chance to react, but leapt upon him and began pummeling him. Giga reacted reflexively to the rain of blows, grabbing Fayde's arm and using his life sapping ability.

"Aaaargh!" Fayde shouted, trying to jerk free, and punching Giga repeatedly in the head with his armored hand. "Get off!" he yelled, finally managing to shake Giga loose and flinging him away. Giga lay where he had fallen, dizzy, nauseous and aching from the head trauma. He resolved not to speak, move or open his eyes until the pain subsided some.

"What was that?!" Fayde asked shaking and panting.

"That's what he did to Alaine," Aurleolis said.

"I figured that part out," Fayde said, "but what is it?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I know that it's his life sap ability, but I don't know how he's able to use it on you."

"Life sap?"

"Yes. All Chao are extremely… adaptable. They can change appearance and develop strengths based on their surroundings and the creatures they interact with. All creatures do that to some extent, but Chao have it to a drastically heightened degree. Obviously someone who lives by the water is much more likely to be a good swimmer then one who does not, but a Chao living by the water will be learn to hold its breath for longer, even adapting its lungs to the environment until it can hold its breath for hours, maybe even breathe underwater. A Chao living near a volcano will quickly develop resistance to the heat, until it can comfortably stand to be in areas that might kill you or I.

"That's not the full extent of their adaptability either. Beyond the inherent ability to change to reflect their surroundings, they can sap life force directly from small animals to gain their traits and abilities, drastically accelerating the speed with which they can acquire specific traits to deal with unique situations. The animal's strengths and powers are reflected in the Chao, so a Chao that absorbed a lot of flickies would be extremely good at flying.

"Nobody understands quite how it works. The Chao simply has to make contact with the animal to drain its energy. It's not an automatic effect of contact though. Giga doesn't sap your life every time you touch him, and Chao can play safely with small animals. We don't know what the energy they sap is, or how they sap it. Nobody has been able to quantify it. All we know is that it's exhaustive to the animal, almost always to the point of being fatal, and the Chao takes on traits of the animal sapped. Life energy seems to be the most accurate name for it, but we don't really know what it is."

"So wait," Fayde said, "they can ALL do this?"

"No, by rights it should not be possible for any of them to use it on you. Most Chao can only use it on creatures smaller and weaker than themselves. Dokan are too large for it to work. Giga is the only Chao I've ever heard of who could use it on creatures our size, and even now we can break free by breaking contact. For smaller creatures it's almost always fatal. I don't know how he does it, but it makes him extremely powerful."

"I'll say. That hurt."

"I don't think you grasp the full meaning. Every time Giga uses that ability he gains some of the power of the person he uses it on, and we have no idea what the upper size limit to his sapping is. His strength can continue growing indefinitely. It means he has the capability to surpass either of us in power, given enough time. The only restriction to his potential is the creatures he can sap."

"Ugh," Giga said, fighting through the nausea to ask his question. "How do you know so much more about Chao than I do when I only just met you, and I'm the Chao?"

"You didn't think you were the only group of Chao out there, did you?"

"What?!" This news struck Giga into inarticulation. Truth be told he had never considered the possibility of other groups of Chao.

"Where did you think we were going? I'm taking you to another Chao garden. I thought you knew."

"I… never really thought about it before. I just figured we were the only ones."


	14. Chapter 14

"So, about how much farther is this place, do you think?" Gigazubyte asked carefully as they made their way through a dense deciduous forest toward what Aurleolis promised was a suitable Chao garden. Fayde could sympathize with the question. It had been a long time since they entered, and the going was slow because of the thick vegetation. Normally Fayde had no trouble locating the sun, but now it was almost completely blocked from his sight by the density of the over growth. The lack of light filtering through made little impact on his ability to see, but the fact that the ambient heat in tree branches was often tricky to distinguish from the surrounding air was giving him some trouble.

"Thankfully, it shouldn't be much more than two or three miles," Aurleolis said, surprisingly without any ire, given that Giga had been asking how much further rather frequently for quite some time. Fayde could sympathize with the question, up to a point.

He noticed that in all the times that Gigazubyte had asked about how much longer the journey would take, he had not yet asked about the other groups of Chao that they would supposedly find at their destination. He seemed reluctant, for some reason that Fayde hadn't figured out yet.

"Uh," Giga said, "I don't really know what any of that means. What's a mile and how do you measure it?"

"You, um," Aureolis struggled to find an answer, "it's a unit of distance." That did little to solve Gigazubyte's problem. "Well, we are probably walking at somewhere between two and three miles per hour…" She could quickly see that she was having little success getting her point across.

"About an hour, an hour and a half," she said, shrugging and throwing up her hands. "Does that answer your question?"

"Yes." Gigazubyte said. He didn't say anything else, apparently content in the knowledge that he would have fulfilled his duties as his people's guardian. Fayde decided to ask some questions. If Gigazubyte wasn't curious about what they would find, Fayde certainly was.

"So Aureolis," Fayde began, getting the bird's attention, "what should we expect to find in this 'garden,' I think is what you called it?"

"Oh, I'm glad you asked," Aureolis said, transitioning into full know-it-all mode. Gigazubyte, as predicted, looked just a little upset by the question.

"You see, the Chao are a small species, appearing in only a few select areas. Interestingly enough, they live in incredibly varied locales." While Fayde was curious about she was saying, he was more intrigued by Gigazubyte's reaction.

"I've heard of Chao living underground, in active volcanoes, even underwater, though I'm not as sure about that last one. They are able to do this because of their extreme adaptability. I mentioned that before remember?

"Anyway, to get back to your question, we are making our way to a Chao Garden, one of the locations that Chao can be found. They are generally very secluded areas, as Chao need a high degree of solitude and anonymity because of a lack of defensive and offensive capabilities."

She looked at Giga. "Present company excluded, of course. Anyway, we are heading towards another of these Gardens, and there should still be a tribe of Chao living there."

Gigazubyte perked up a little bit at that one. "Wait, you didn't say there was already someone else living there. What if they don't let us stay?"

"Well," Aureolis began, trying to come up with an answer, "they shouldn't have a reason not to. Why wouldn't they?"

"Because people are petty and provincial?" Fayde said. "In my experience, people don't like to share." That wasn't true. He grew up in a place where he lived on the collective welfare of the village for most of his life, and then was taken in by a man who had no real reason to. Fayde couldn't figure out why he had said that.

"Yeah!" Gigazubyte said, capitalizing on Fayde's unintended lie. "They might just not want to!"

"Well," Aureolis said, "we'll just have to deal with that problem when it comes. Besides, you'll like this: this group of Chao, unless something has changed, have their own protector, so you won't have to do the job anymore."

"Really?" Gigazubyte asked, sounding halfway between excitement and trepidation, "You mean like Chaos?"

Fayde was not nearly as enthusiastic. "Whoa, whoa," he said. "What protector? Is this thing going to be happy that we're barging in?"

"Um," Aureolis began, sheepishly, likely regretting mentioning it, "probably not, I would imagine, but I think it will be alright. It won't hurt a Chao."

"We aren't Chao," Fayde said, "and Giga barely looks like one anymore. You need to tell us more. What is this thing?"

"It's, uh…" she began, "a Chaos… Elemental…"

"A what?" Fayde asked. He had heard her fine, his hearing was good enough, but he needed just a bit of clarification.

"It's called a Chaos Elemental," she said. She didn't say anything else until Fayde made it clear with a little hand motion that he wanted more.

"Oh all right!" she said, giving up. "It's a semi-sentient being that represents one of the four cardinal elements and feeds off of Chaos Energy. Is that good enough?" Gigazubyte looked sullen all of a sudden.

"A little…" Fayde said. "But I'm not sure that I'm getting quite all of it. Is it dangerous?"

"Well," she said, "it can be, if it has any emeralds, and I think this particular Elemental has one," that piqued Fayde's interest, "but it's mostly peaceful by nature."

"So these things get stronger when they have emeralds?" Fayde asked, and Aureolis nodded. "About how much stronger are we talking here?"

Aureolis seemed to think about it for a minute. "Um, just imagine a four-foot tall Giga," she said.

"Oh," Fayde replied, "just wonderful. We better hope it's friendly." He paused. "While we're on the subject, are there any more of these things?"

"Chaos was one," Gigazubyte said sullenly, turning to face Aureolis, "wasn't he?" She was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," she said, "he was. He was the Chaos Elemental of Water. Most of us… well, we called him Ryujin. Technically they're all called Chaos. It's more of a title, really."

Gigazubyte looked as if he'd been punched. It must hurt him to find out things about his friend and protector from others that he did not already know himself. Fayde could sympathize. They walked in silence.

Laena and her Hunters crept through the forest, silent as the faint breeze that just barely reached them through the trees. The thick vegetation was both a blessing and a curse, she thought as she ducked under a low hanging vine. It provided a lot more cover than the open fields to the south east of Benyan, but that worked both ways. Fayde would have a difficult time spotting them through the trees, but they had to stay much closer to observe his party than they would have in the open. Still, overall Laena was somewhat glad that he had entered the forest. The land of Daru-Sanrein was heavily wooded, and that meant that the Hunters were doing a familiar job in familiar territory.

That was pretty much the only thing he'd done to make her job easier, though. The worst part was the Eagle. Laena had confirmed it with her own eyes. It hadn't been so long that she would forget the magician who had stormed into Dragmar's throne room and left so many of his guards, her guards, unconscious. Even if she hadn't gotten close enough to see them this time around, she hadn't forgotten the look in those blue eyes.

The green creature travelling with them also worried her. Shenner had suggested that the little blue creatures might be the magician's homunculi, but what did that make the green one, her familiar? It vaguely resembled the smaller blue ones, but it was much larger and obviously more powerful, and it seemed to be made out of solid emerald. Solid emerald that moved, if such a thing was possible. In any case it appeared to lead the smaller ones, and act as a link between them and the magician. Laena wasn't too worried about the blue ones. They seemed relatively frail and weak. They might be dangerous if they all swarmed the Hunters at once, but even then it would mostly be danger by distracting them from the more dangerous enemies. No, she thought, the key would be to take down the leader. The only problem was, she had no idea what it was capable of or how dangerous it could be, and that worried her.

"What're you thinking, Laena?" Hara asked.

"We've been trailing this boy for a week now. Even if we capture him today, Dragmar will be angry at how long it took us. Besides, the longer we hesitate, the better the chance they'll realize they're being watched. The problem is, if we attack now, we're going up against enemies we know very little about beyond the fact that they're dangerous. I don't dare order the ambush, and I don't dare hold it off."

"We should do it soon," Hara replied, "We have an advantage as long as they're in the woods. It's easier to set an ambush or sneak up on them at night, and the bird's flight is limited by the tree branches."

"I know. Normally I'd attack while they were sleeping, but they've been smart about setting watches these past two nights, and I don't know what kind of senses the bird or the green thing have, or if they have magic traps or alarms that will activate if we get too close. So for now, I suggest we circle ahead of them and then split up and sweep the forest for any natural geography that could help or hinder us."

Laena didn't have to wait long before they found something. Within half an hour Gendzu came hurrying through the forest toward her, nearly silent for all that she was moving in a fluid lope just short of a full run.

"What is it?" Laena asked.

"A big depression," the other lioness replied, "About forty, maybe fifty yards across. Doesn't look natural. It's like somebody cut down the trees and hollowed out the foundation for a building, but never built it. Instead the dirt is packed around the edges so there's a short hill all the way around which slopes into the pit on the inside. I'd say it's maybe six feet deep. And there appear to be some sort of burrowing creatures living in the walls, judging by all the holes in the hill."

"That doesn't sound like a great place for an ambush," Laena said, quickly running over the possibilities in her mind," The hill might provide some cover, but open ground is the exact opposite…"

"Oh no, it's not a particularly good spot. You didn't let me finish. In the middle of this depression there is a crudely built shrine of some sort, and on it rests a jewel like the one king Dragmar possesses."

"One of the jewels of the gods?" Laena breathed. If that was true, it added a completely new element to the mission.

"I'm certain of it."

"That must be where the magician is headed. We have to get to it before her. Lead me to it!" Laena didn't know much about the stones, but she knew they were powerful and highly coveted for that power. If she could bring it back to Dragmar he wouldn't even question how long the mission took. Not that his opinion mattered to her in and of itself, but it was important to stay in his good graces if she wanted to keep her job.

Laena followed Gendzu through the trees as fast as they could go without making enough noise to alert Fayde's group. Laena didn't know exactly how far away they were, but she guessed it was less than a mile, probably less than half. They needed to get the gem and get out of the area now, or they would almost certainly wind up fighting the magician without the benefit of surprise, but at the same time they had to do it noiselessly or forfeit the advantage just as surely.

Thankfully, she spotted the hill Gendzu had described about ten minutes later. She motioned for the lioness to slow down, and together they crept up to the edge. Neither Fayde nor the magician was anywhere in sight. The gem however was, resting serenely on a crude altar of dirt, stone and sticks, just as Gendzu had described. It glowed a deep, earthen brown in the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the gap in the trees above the clearing.

"Be careful," Laena whispered, "I don't see anybody, but it seems unlikely that anyone would leave such a thing sitting unprotected in the open."

They cautiously crept toward the altar, watching and listening for any signs of a trap. Laena was nearly there when the dirt in front of her erupted upward, forming a horrifying, vaguely anthropomorphic monster of earth and stone.

After a while, the path Fayde and the others were following disappeared entirely and Gigazubyte's spirits began to improve as they neared their destination. He didn't seem to feel like talking to Fayde and Aurleolis, but he did open up a bit and chat with the other Chao. Fayde couldn't understand Chao-speak, but he was mostly sure that it was happy. Mostly. Fayde expected that they had to be getting close to the Garden by now, and he was right.

"Giga," Aureolis said, as Gigazubyte turned away from another Chao to face her.

"Yeah?" he asked. "What is it?"

"We should be there in less than five minutes or so, I imagine," she said. "You should tell the others."

"Oh!" he said. "Definitely!" He began talking to the Chao, and Fayde could see their excitement. Amid the cheering, however, Fayde could barely make out some other sound, off in the distance, in the direction of the Garden. He stopped to listen.

"Aureolis," he said quickly, as the Chao began to quiet down and the sound became clearer, "do you hear something?"

"Hm?" she murmured, stopping as well. "Where?" He pointed in the direction they were traveling, towards the Garden. She listened.

"I do," she said. "It sounds like shouting. That can't be good." She turned to face Gigazubyte and the Chao, who had also ceased walking while she and Fayde had been conversing. "Giga! We need to check things out, quickly!"

"What?" he asked, broken out of his revelry. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know, that's the problem!" Aurleolis replied

He said something to the Chao and then ran to catch up to Fayde and Aureolis as they began running towards the Garden. As they closed what Fayde estimated to be the last quarter mile the sounds intensified. Yes, there was definitely screaming.

The three companions reached a small hill and scrambled up it. The fight had to be happening right on the other side. Upon reaching the top, Fayde saw that the far side sloped down into a circular hollow that must be the chao garden Aurleolis was leading them to. There were several creatures visible in it, but not one of them was a chao. Instead, Fayde saw six Daru, a Chaos Emerald, what appeared to be a mobile pile of earth throwing sizable stones at the Daru, and a very unwelcome but familiar figure.

"What's she doing here?" He asked.

Gigazubyte wasn't even asking questions. "Alaine!" He shouted, and shot the purple bat in the back with an impressive Chaos Bolt.

She screeched and fell to the ground, but was back on her feet in an instant, whirling to face them.

"What? You-!" she got no further in her sentence before the earth creature flung her into the side of the hill with one of its massive fists.

Fayde hesitated, trying to figure out what was going on. Part of the situation seemed obvious. The Daru, who were almost certainly Dragmar's Hunters come to ambush him, had stumbled into the garden and angered its protector. There was no other reason he could think of for them to be there, and he had suspected he was being watched for the last few days. He wasn't on their side. Alaine was definitely an enemy, even if he didn't know why she was here. That left the earth creature. A Chaos Elemental, Aurleolis had called it. It was attacking both Alaine and the Daru. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Fayde said softly, but somehow he didn't think that was true in this case. Perhaps they could sit this out. The Daru seemed preoccupied trying to get one of their own out of the clearing without getting killed, and the earth elemental was now attacking Alaine.

Gigazubyte charged to the hill to help it. Then again, maybe they would get involved whether he liked it or not.

"Fayde!" Aureolis said, distraught. "We've got to get the Daru out of there!"

"What?" Fayde asked incredulously. "Are you crazy? Those are Dragmar's Hunters! They're here to kill me!"

Aurleolis looked at him. "So you plan to let them die here?"

Fayde snarled, "Better than having to kill them myself! And I won't have much choice if they survive this!" She said nothing. "Fine," he relented, unable to meet her stare, "you go save them, if it's so important, but I'm going after the emerald."

He jumped down into the depression and made for the emerald, which was lying forgotten on the ground in all the confusion. "In the eye of the storm" he thought wryly, "just about the worst possible place.

Alaine was having difficulty dealing with both Gigazubyte and the elemental together. She would dodge one's attack, only to be hit by the other, and they weren't giving her enough of an opening to use her explosive attack to good effect. Still, she wasn't exactly losing either. Giga and the elemental were taking almost as many hits as they dealt out, and Alaine didn't seem to be overly exerting herself. Fayde noticed she wasn't flying, but while her shoulder seemed a little stiff, it did not appear to have had a knife driven into it scant days ago.

Fayde had just about made it to the emerald, confident that all the combatants were still too focused on each other to be watching him. Then Alaine shoved her fist into the midsection of the earth elemental and it exploded in a flash of red light, raining pebbles and chunks of earth of Fayde. Before anyone could react, she turned and began delivering a savage battery of kicks and punches to Gigazubyte. Aurleolis appeared behind Alaine and kicked her in the back of the head, but Alaine caught her by the wrist when she attempted to follow it up with a punch, slugged her hard in the stomach and then across the face, and threw her to the ground before returning to Giga.

Fayde reached out to grab the emerald and go save his friends, but the earth swallowed it out from under his fingertips and the ground began to shake. The hill around the clearing began to ripple, the flowed inward, gaining height like a wave. Alaine stopped pounding Giga and swore.

"Damn!" she said, disappearing in a flash of light. Giga looked up from where he was lying on the ground, and his yellow eyes widened in terror. Aurleolis sat up dizzily, but she didn't seem to recognize what was going on at first. Then her brain made sense of what her eyes were seeing, and she too vanished in a burst of light.

It was Fayde's turn to swear. He was at the center and had no idea how to teleport. As the earth and rock began to cascade down towards him Fayde ran at it and leapt onto a largish rock. He quickly jumped again, onto another, running and jumping up the sliding dirt and stone. He wasn't making much headway, but at least he wasn't getting buried, which was more than he'd be able to say about Gigazubyte in a few seconds. He noticed that there were still four Daru in the depression, attempting to escape the same way he was. Aurleolis must have rescued the other two before coming to Giga's aid.

The next thing Fayde knew he had misplaced one of his feet and tripped on something. He frantically scrambled to gain purchase on the increasingly vertical hill, but lose dirt offered nothing for him to brace against and he began rolling with the dirt, rocks and sticks battering him at all sides. He managed to right himself just enough to see a tree head straight for him, but his lower half had become partially buried in dirt. He frantically tried to dig himself out, but to no avail. The tree got closer, and he almost started trying to dig in deeper to get under it when Aureolis appeared, her hand extended.

They reappeared on mostly solid ground just outside the collapsed hill as the dirt ground to a halt, where they could survey the ruins. Fayde was a little disoriented from his first teleport. He threw up.

"Sorry," Aurleolis said, "I wasn't thinking when I teleported myself out. I should have grabbed you first."

"Never mind me," he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his gloves." "Where's Giga?" He searched for any sign of the green Chao.

"Where is he?" Aureolis asked frantically.

"I don't know!" Fayde replied. "The last I saw, he was just about to be buried under the dirt! Do you think he's…?"

Fayde and Aureolis began running towards the rough center of what was once the Chao Garden. It still sloped downward some, the area hadn't completely flattened out, and there was a slim possibility that Giga wasn't too far buried that they would be able to find him, or so Fayde told himself.

They reached the center and yelled for him, digging with furious abandon. Fayde extended his claws to help himself dig, tossing earth every which way with frantic energy. He tried to ignore the voice in his head pointing out the futility of their actions. It would be nearly impossible to find Gigazubyte in there, especially as he could have been knocked any which way, or, theoretically, he could have even used Chaos Control and would absent-mindedly show up any second now. If he hadn't there wasn't much point digging.

Aurleolis stopped digging, and dropped her hands to her side. At first Fayde thought she had given up, but then she pointed at him and shouted, "There!"

It took Fayde a moment to realize she was actually pointing through him at a spot about five feet to his left.

"He's near the surface, we might still have time!" Aurleolis yelled, and they resumed their efforts. Thirty seconds later, the earth exploded in Fayde's face. When he looked back, Giga was digging his legs out of the hole he had blown around his head and body.

"Sorry," Giga said, "I really had to get out, I couldn't move!"

"No worries," Fayde said, "At least you're alive. The question is: what do we do now? This garden is trashed, and I'm pretty sure the elemental was trying to kill us."

"The Chao and I can't stay here, can we?" Giga asked sadly. Aureolis shook her head.

"Not that it matters, since you're all about to die anyway," Alaine's voice said. Fayde instinctually threw himself out of the way as the ground he had been sitting erupted in a bright red fireball. Giga and Aurleolis likewise dodged similar fates. Alaine launched more bursts, forcing them all to jump back until Fayde slammed against a half buried tree trunk, which exploded into pulp above his head as he ducked her next shot. Giga flew at her, attempting a counterattack, but she caught his relatively ungainly charge and slammed him to earth where he lay still, unconscious or dead.

"You know, I was planning on letting you live," Alaine said, walking toward them with the air of a predator playing with its food, assured that it could end the game whenever it wanted, "Or at least give you an even chance anyway." Fayde shifted his weight uneasily, preparing to dodge at a moment's notice. Aurleolis let fly with Chaos Lightning, but Alaine dodged the first burst and deflected the second through some technique Fayde couldn't quite follow. Before Aurleolis could fire a third Alaine closed the gap between them and rocked her with a punch. Or at least that's what it looked like, but Aurleolis seemed to have rolled with it, and as she fell backwards she lashed out with her legs and caught Alaine in the midriff, knocking her to her knees. Alaine stood up, but Aurleolis stayed prone and knocked her feet out from under her with a leg sweep. She tried to punch the downed Alaine, but Alaine caught her fist from the ground and threw her. Fayde attempted to rush forward to help, but Alaine knocked him off his feet with an explosion.

Aurleolis got to her feet just in time to duck under one of Alaine's kicks, but Alaine caught her by the wrist and throat as she tried to strike back.

"I'd suggest you stay back, boy, if you don't want me to crush her windpipe," she said to Fayde, who had just been planning to rush her from behind. He retreated a couple of steps to stand by the tree trunk.

"Give it up, Leo," Alaine said as the Eagle struggled. For all that Aurleolis was the taller of the two, Alaine was holding her full off the ground.

"You never were any good at augmentation, and you're not good enough at energy bursts to compensate. Now stop struggling, because I have something to say. The longer you let me talk, the longer you live. If you're lucky, I might even wax on long enough for your little green friend to wake up, and together the three of you might be able to drive me off. But I wouldn't count on it a second time." She threw Aurleolis across the intervening space to Fayde, who caught her, although he was forced to one knee in the process.

"Now," Alaine began, as Fayde set Aurleolis on the ground, "I was originally in the area looking for the Chaos Emerald at that garden, but I got sidetracked when I noticed your little squabble in Benyan. With the wounds you gave me there, I couldn't go after the emerald right away…"

"You were planning this all along?" Aurleolis asked, cold fury in her voice, although it cracked at the end as her damaged throat rasped for breath.

"Oh don't get so worked up, it's not like the Chaos own the emeralds they guard. Anyway, I decided I'd let you all set it off, since you seemed to be heading this way anyway, and I'd steal the emerald in the confusion. If you survived the elemental, I think I would've let you go. For the moment, anyway. But then those fleabags showed up and forced my hand, and you just had to arrive and attack me so that it could get away with the emerald. I'm telling you all this," Alaine continued, answering Fayde's unasked question, "so that you understand that even after the first time you crossed me, you had a chance to live. I would have let you go, but you chose your own death when you chose to attack me here."

She smiled. Fayde tensed, waiting for the attack, but it seemed she wasn't finished with her speech yet, "And when you're dead, I'm going to kill the cats too, because without them you wouldn't have been able to ruin my plans."

Aurleolis blanched slightly, her face a mixture of fury and horror. That was excessively vindictive, Fayde thought. He had plenty of reasons to wish the cats dead himself, but those reasons were that they had killed and enslaved the people of his village. He too had been after the emerald, but the loss of it by itself wasn't nearly enough to justify murder.

"Oh yes," Alaine said, seeing the looks on their faces, "I saw you rescue two of them while I was busy with the elemental. So not only will you have lost your own lives, but you've also failed to save anyone else after all!" She laughed cruelly. Fayde tensed more, if that was possible, "And now, I- what?!"

Fayde had been so focused on Alaine, waiting for her to attack, and Alaine so focused on gloating, that they both had failed to notice two shapes limp out of the trees and creep stealthily across the clearing. Alaine heard the nearer of the two just in time to react. She spun around and sidestepped just enough to turn what would have almost certainly been a fatal sword thrust through the center of the abdomen into a still severe wound in her side. She grabbed the leopardess Daru by the neck and threw her against the tree trunk with incredible force. Fayde heard bones break. Alaine looked positively murderous, clutching the gaping wound in her side with one hand and preparing to attack with the other. Fayde determined to add another cut before she got him, and to make sure his was deep enough that she bled to death.

Then a Chaos Bolt impacted her in the back, and she rocked forward, catching herself with her free hand. Gigazubyte was up. Fayde rushed forward, claws extended and knife drawn.

"I, you… This isn't finished!" She spat, and disappeared a split second before Fayde's claws whistled through empty air.

"Damn!" he swore.

"Hara!" the second Daru yelled, limping painfully across the clearing. Her right leg seemed to be broken, and she was bleeding badly from a gash on her forehead, which seemed to have been plastered with wet leaves to slow the bleeding. The leopardess coughed slightly and spat up blood.

"S'no good, Laena," she whispered, "This won't heal." Fayde wasn't sure if her words reached the lioness, he barely heard them himself.

"Why'd you do that?" Laena sobbed, limping past Fayde to her companion and cradling her head, "Why?"

"You 'eard 'er same as," the leopardess coughed again, and winced, "Same as I did. She wa' going to kill us anyway, and the mag… the Eagle saved you from that thing. Figured if we were gonna die, might 's well pay some debts first, huh? S'not like you'd be bringin' 'im back alive, even if you lived."

"Shh, don't talk like that, you'll, you'll be…" Laena's voice broke.

"You can't say it 'cause it ain't true. My spine's broke, I can feel… hurts real bad above the waist, but nothin' in my legs… best you can do fer me is end it quickly."

"No!" Laena spun to face Aurleolis, her eyes wild. "Fix this, magician! Use your powers, heal her!"

"I-I can't," Aurleolis sighed, shaking her head sadly.

"You have to!"

"This is beyond the scope of my ability! I can accelerate natural healing a little bit, I can't mend a broken back!"

"Then what use is your damn magic?!" Laena spat. Aurleolis flinched and looked dejectedly away. Fayde raised a hand, to console Aurleolis or reprimand Laena, he wasn't sure, but he let it fall limply to his side.

"C-come on," Hara choked, "You k-know what you have… to d-do."

"No!"

"You'd rather... wait fer me to choke on the blood in my lungs? Hara slurred.

"No, I...I'm so sorry Hara…" Laena drew a small knife from her hip.

"S'not yer fault. You tried…" Laena slashed her throat, quickly and cleanly, and the Hara's eyes went blank. Laena reached up and shut them, tears leaking from her own. Fayde was both appalled at the thought of doing that to a comrade, and impressed that Laena had the strength for a mercy kill. He wasn't sure he could have done it.

"All right," she said, after a minute or so "end it!" Her voice quavered a bit, but did not break.

"What? Fayde asked, stunned. Giga and Aurleolis said nothing. Both appeared to still be in shock.

"You know we were here to capture you, but now I'm crippled and I can only assume the rest of my team is dead, so what are you waiting for?!"

"…yes," Fayde said, "They are. The elemental got them. It was… probably a terrible way to die."

"I suppose that makes you happy?" she asked. Her tone wasn't nasty, just inquisitive, curious about the man she expected would end her life.

Fayde didn't respond at first. "I'm happy that my enemies are dead and I am alive," he said at length.

"Then what are you waiting for?" she asked again. "I haven't got all day!"

Fayde almost laughed at the absurdity of the statement.

"You want me to kill you so badly?"

"My leg is broken, I can't complete my mission, and my team is dead. The only thing left is to join them!"

"I thought your mission was to kill me?" Fayde asked, unsure of what to say to that.

"No, I was supposed to bring you back alive. Even if it was, I don't see any point to trying to kill you. One of your friends would finish me off, and you tried to save us, even if you didn't succeed. Why did you do that? You must have known who we were."

"Don't thank me, I planned to leave you to the elemental. It was her." Fayde jerked his thumb at Aurleolis."

"I see. So will you kill me then, as you would have let the elemental?"

Fayde had been asking himself that same question. He made his decision.

"No. We didn't save you then just to kill you now. I would have left you to the elemental, but I will not violate my partner's efforts to rescue you. I am not a monster like Dragmar, I will not kill the helpless."

She looked at him warily,

"Besides," he added, finalizing his thoughts, "You're more use to me alive. I need someone who knows the workings of Dragmar's government.


	15. Chapter 15

"Well," Gigazubyte said, looking around at the ruined garden, "What do we do now?" He was really at a loss. The plan had been so perfect, so easy. Find the garden, meet the Chaos, get a new home, and now thanks to Alaine it was completely ruined. The Garden was destroyed; the Chaos was gone. Where were they going to live now? Did Aurleolis know of another Garden they could go to? Even if she did, how could they know it wouldn't be demolished before they even got there?

Nobody answered at first. Fayde had walked off to stand several paces away, while Aurleolis knelt by the fallen tree, looking sick. The lioness sat dumbly on the ground, weeping softly.

"I don't know," Aurleolis said finally, looking up after a long pause, "but I think that we need to go to one of the older Guardians for help. We're in over our heads."

"You mean we weren't from the beginning?" Fayde asked bitterly, coming back. Evidently he had decided he didn't have anywhere to walk off to.

"That wound isn't going to stop Alaine from coming after us for very long. We've gotten lucky and surprised her twice now, but I wouldn't count on it happening a third time, and she's too powerful for us to beat in a straight fight. If she were a normal person we could count on an injury like that laying her up for weeks, if it didn't get infected, but Alaine is a Guardian, and we're lucky if we have a week before she's fully healed. We need to let the other Guardians what she's up to so they can do something about it."

"So we've got a week to find another guardian more powerful than Alaine," Fayde said.

"Essentially," Aurleolis replied, "Assuming she waits until she's fully healed to come after us. It's a fairly certain bet that she will if we don't do anything about it, the only question is when."

"Well that's great," Fayde said. "So, are there any guardians in the vicinity, or is our luck holding true?"

"Clawe lives maybe fifty or sixty miles from here," Aurleolis said, plucking a stray feather from her head and twirling it in her talons. "If we can manage ten miles a day we can be there in about five days. Normally that would hardly be a problem, but we have the chao in tow. They travel so slowly, and I'm not nearly experienced enough to attempt teleporting us en masse. Just moving myself I'd have to do it in multiple jumps and rest in between. I don't think Alaine would attack them, but I wouldn't put it past her either, and that still leaves you and Giga, and neither of you can warp…"

"Right," Fayde said, pushing himself off the tree he had been leaning against, "let's go with that plan."

"Pardon me?" Aurleolis replied, blinking in puzzlement. "What plan?"

"You go to Clawe, since you can move faster by yourself, and we'll follow at our own pace. It means splitting up, which I'm not happy about, but frankly, it doesn't much matter if we aren't powerful enough to defend ourselves while united. The sooner we get Clawe's protection the better. Once you reach him he can warp out to meet us easily enough." Fayde frowned, and then added, "That's right, isn't it? He can do that?"

"Well yes, Master Clawe is certainly powerful enough to teleport where he so pleases. He is the oldest and strongest of the Guardians, but-"

"Fantastic. If you can make it by tomorrow that should be much too soon for Alaine to recover. We'll be done with days to spare."

"Well yes, but how will I find you again?"

"I… I hadn't thought of that part, but it shouldn't be that hard. We're a pretty big group and we haven't exactly been making an effort to hide ourselves, and you'll know the general direction we're headed. Besides, you shouldn't need to worry about it. I'm sure Clawe has a way of finding us. He might not notice a small group like ours if he wasn't specifically looking for us, but surely if you let him know we're here he can find our exact location easily enough." Fayde's frown deepened as he spoke, as if he didn't trust the words coming out of his mouth.

"That's true…" Aurleolis said, the her eyes narrowed with suspicion, "You seem to know a lot more about Clawe than I would have expected."

"I know more about him than I expected," Fayde said. "It's just… intuition, I suppose. Lucky guesses."

"Hmm…" Aurleolis said thoughtfully, "Well, it's true that if I can convince him to help that would solve all our problems."

"If?" Giga asked, reinserting himself into the conversation. Planning was all well and good, and while he found it interesting he had nothing to contribute, so he tried to keep quiet, but this was too much.

"The older Guardians take very little interest in the affairs of others. It's… often very difficult to persuade them to get involved in anything outside their respective villages unless it's a catastrophe of considerable scale. Now, Alaine is one of their own, so normally I'd have no doubts, but Clawe is the strangest and most removed Guardian of all, so I don't know whether he'll aid us that directly."

"So wait, you don't know if he'll do anything about it?" Giga asked incredulously. "So he might be okay with Alaine killing us?"

"As I've said, he's quite inscrutable, but-"

"So we can't even guarantee he won't side with Alaine?" Fayde asked, "I don't like this."

Aurleolis shook her head "Clawe is on his own side. I don't know what he'll do, but I doubt even he would refuse us help if we show up on his doorstep."

"Or we could be walking straight into a trap. He and Alaine could be working together," Fayde said. "If he's so 'inscrutable', how do we know he hasn't decided to simply stop playing by the rules like she did? Is there someone more trustworthy we can go to?"

"All the other guardians are hundreds of miles away, and while a lot has changed lately, and none of it for the better, I still trust Clawe will ultimately do the right thing and help us."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll do the right thing, as he determines it to be," Fayde responded, "but I'm much less confident that that will involve helping us. After all, he was okay with letting my village be enslaved and my friends slaughtered."

"Look, Clawe might not protect us, but he certainly isn't going to kill us. I can't prove it, but I trust him and I'm going to go ahead and pay him a visit. Clawe has the means to procure whatever he desires, and if he desired our deaths I don't think we'd still be drawing breath, whereas I know for a fact Alaine desires them. Even if he won't come out to help us, I think Alaine will avoid attacking us too close to his home, and my going to pay him a visit won't slow you down any."

"Except that you're the only one here who knows where he lives." Giga thought that Fayde was trying awfully hard to talk her out of this plan considering that he had suggested it in the first place.

"Can't we just stay here?" Giga asked, knowing full well what the answer was going to be but wanting to try anyway.

"No!" Fayde and Aurleolis said in unison, whirling on him. They glanced at each other, and Aurleolis continued.

"Even if I wasn't sure Alaine was going to come back here, the garden is wrecked and the spring that was here is under several feet of dirt. I'm not entirely sure Alaine will attack the Chao, but I don't want to give her the chance, because I suspect she will, if only to get at us."

"Okay! Sheesh, I was just asking!"

"Enough," Fayde said. "I don't have great confidence in a plan that relies on the help of a crazy bear who might just as likely turn out to be okay with letting Alaine have us, but it's the only plan we have, and we're burning daylight. Leo, tell us which direction his cave is in, and then head there yourself."

"Well, um, okay, I'd say it's about two points off south southwest from here, but that's assuming you can keep a perfectly straight line through the forest, which I find doubtful, seeing as the landscape is rather rough and it's easier to go around boulders and ravines than over or through them…"

"Where's south southwest?" Giga asked.

"Look," said Fayde, "just point in a direction and we'll do our best to go that way."

"I really think it might be better if we all just went together. I don't doubt I can convince Clawe to at least make sure Alaine doesn't kill us while we're in the vicinity of his cave, but I don't know that he'll listen if you guys are still way out here, and if he tells me to bring you in myself I don't know if I can find you again in time. It's a big forest and it stretches most of the way to his home."

"We'll make signal fires when we camp. There's been so much rain lately that we shouldn't risk burning down the forest, and wet leaves make more smoke anyway."

"I don't know how well that will work. You'll need a tremendous fire before you've got enough smoke to make it through the canopy."

Now they seemed to have reversed positions again. What was so hard about making a plan that they had to keep going back and forth over it like this, Giga wondered.

"We could just wait here while you go to see Clawe," he offered. "That way you'd know where to find us for sure."

"No!" Aurleolis and Fayde said again. This time Fayde took it upon himself to explain.

"That would mean staying where Alaine can easily find us as well, for much too long. Anyway, Leo, isn't there some way you can track us through the emeralds? Giga's got two, you should be able to find him, right?"

"If only it were that simple. I can track them to a certain degree, yes, but only once I'm within half a mile or so and it's kind of a game of hot and cold. Some Guardians are better at it than others, but even so, it's not like most of us can sense an emerald from anywhere. We have to be fairly close and even then we may not know exactly where it is. Otherwise there wouldn't be any stray emeralds any where in the world, the guardians would have them all already, and Ryujin's emeralds would all be found by now. It's a good thing, in a sense. Alaine isn't much better at sensing them than I am, if at all, which is the only reason she hadn't already collected the one in town and attacked the garden sooner. On the other hand, it makes our job that much harder, since we don't know where Ryujin's emeralds scattered to."

"It also means Alaine will have just as difficult a time finding us in the woods as you will, or rather more so, since she won't know where we're headed. Look, is there some sort of landmark we could meet you at if all else fails, something too large and obvious to be missed?"

"Hmm… Well yes, I suppose that will work. There's a gorge not far from Clawe's home. It's pretty difficult to overlook if you're headed that direction, and nearly impossible to avoid crossing. We can meet there if I fail to find you before you reach it. It's not exactly a perfect solution because it means we potentially lose at least a couple of days while I'm searching, but it'll have to do."

"All right then," Fayde said, "Hopefully we'll see you again within two days. If not, we'll meet you at the gorge. Best of luck." He stuck out his hand. Aurleolis clasped it and shook.

"Same to you," she said. "Just one thing before I go though. How did you know Clawe was a bear? I'm sure I never told you that."

"I-" Fayde jerked in sudden alarm, "I don't know. I really don't. It all sounds familiar, like someone told me a story about him once, only I can't think who or when, or how they would have known him either." Fayde shook his head as though to clear fog from his brain.

"The harder I try to remember, the more it slips away from me, but I think I knew he lived in a cave somewhere in this area, though not exactly where. The bit about the gorge sounds familiar, but I might just be imagining that. It doesn't seem like a very important detail."

"Hmm…" said Aurleolis, "That's very puzzling, but we'll have to leave it for later." She turned and vanished in a flash of light.

"Shoot," Giga said, "I forgot to ask her what the other Chao were like, since we didn't see any before they got away." At least, that's what he hoped had happened. He didn't think their Chaos would have buried them all just to protect itself. His Chaos certainly wouldn't have done that. Either way, destroying the garden was a stupid thing to do, even to protect it from Alaine. You didn't protect things by destroying them, that made no sense at all. He was miffed that he hadn't gotten to meet the other Chao, miffed more that this Chaos had destroyed its garden when they were so close, and miffed at Alaine most of all for, well, being Alaine and attacking people all the time.

"Do you all always take this long to decide on a plan?" the cat that Aurleolis had rescued asked. Her eyes were dry now, although the cheeks below them were damp. She evidently didn't allow mourning to overcome her for long.

"No," Fayde replied testily, "usually we just wing it. If you had something to say about it, why didn't you speak up before?"

"I didn't think it was prudent to interrupt. The Eagle sure likes to hear herself talk."

"I suppose she does, but I like to hear her talk too because she knows a hell of a lot more than I do, and even if I don't follow everything she says there's a lot I can learn. What's it to you?"

"I was just… I was just wondering what you were planning to do with me."

It was Fayde's turn to stumble. "I… I hadn't really thought that far ahead yet. I haven't exactly had time, but I suppose I'll send you back to Dragmar to spy, and maybe sabotage some things. I helped build his castle, but I need to know more than what the foundations look like to plan an assault. I need an insider, someone who can help me get my people out and then take him down."

The lioness shook her head "That won't work. Dragmar made it abundantly clear he would have my head if I didn't bring him yours. Unless you want to return in chains and be executed, I can't go back. Even if you did agree to that, he might have me killed for the loss of the hunters anyway.

"Leaving that aside for the moment, what are you thinking, sending me back to the man who ordered me to kill you? It relies entirely too much on my gratitude to you for sparing my life, my disloyalty to Dragmar, and my ability to keep my mouth shut. How do you know I won't end up double crossing you and reporting everything you're doing to Dragmar, even if I don't intend to?"

"So what are you saying?" Fayde growled, "That I should just kill you now? I already said I wasn't going to do that; don't make me reconsider."

"What I'm saying is that you're far too trusting. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful you spared me, but you've got to remember that I was sent to kill you, and that people look out for number one. As far as you're concerned, I'm an enemy."

Fayde considered this for a moment, and then said, "As far as I'm concerned you're no longer a threat, and still potentially useful. If I can't send you back to Dragmar as a spy, we'll take you with us and you can tell me what you know about him. I want everything. Plans, fortifications, alliances, everything I might find useful, even if I don't specifically ask for it."

"Fair enough. My first piece of advice: don't ever let yourself be fooled into thinking a hunter is harmless, or anyone else, for that matter, be they enemy or no. I may be injured and alone, but that doesn't mean I'm not still dangerous."

"I trust your self interest to protect me, if nothing else. You know I killed the first four Dragmar sent after me, and even if you thought you could manage to take me out, you still have to contend with my friends, who are both at least as powerful as I am, and you've told me that even if you return with my body you might be killed for the loss of the hunters. You've got no home to go back to, and on top of that you have to contend with an injured leg. Furthermore, Alaine may come back and she's much less merciful than we are. You don't really have much choice but to come with us. For the moment, you're relying on us to take care of you."

"That's where you're wrong. Remember boy, I'm a hunter. I can take care of myself. Even with an injured leg, I won't have that much trouble living off the land long enough to find a town where I can disappear. In any event, the way I figure it, I'm much more likely to be attacked by that bat bitch again if I stay with your group. I'm sure she wouldn't hesitate to kill me if she caught me alone, but she's got a much better chance of finding you all than she does of finding me if I don't want to be found."

"Fine then, go," Fayde snapped

"I… what?" the lioness said in confusion.

"You heard me. I don't have time to deal with you if you don't want to come with us, and if you say you can take care of yourself I don't owe you anything. Your information would be useful in taking out Dragmar, but I don't need it enough to go to the effort of preventing you from escaping every night."

"I didn't say I was planning to escape, merely that I could if I so chose."

"I don't have time for word games either. If you're coming with us, fine, but you'd better be able to move yourself because I'm not carrying you. If not, this is where we part ways. Come on Giga, let's round up the Chao and get a move on." Fayde said, turning away toward where they had left the Chao.

"Wait," the lioness said, a pleading tone coming into her voice, "I'm coming with you. But before we go, will you help me bury Hara?"

Fayde sighed and turned back to her. "All right. We'll dig a grave for you, but it will have to be shallow because we don't have time for a full one."

"A shallow grave is better than no grave at all."


	16. Chapter 16

Fayde and Gigazubyte did their best to help Laena bury her fallen comrade, silently carving out a small grave and then solemnly standing by while Laena said her final good-byes. It was hard going without proper tools, and the hole they dug was barely deep enough to cover the body. The whole thing made Fayde sick.

It was not the physical repulsion of the body itself that bothered him. That was certainly unpleasant, but he had seen enough of bodies in his short life to keep the contents of his stomach well in check. Fayde was more disgusted with his own conflicted emotions and the… the grotesque waste of the entire situation. The cats had come to kill him, if not in the immediate sense certainly by way of handing him over to Dragmar. He had known that since before Laena admitted it. So why did he feel anything but relief that they were dead? What did he feel, besides relief? Sympathy? Pity? He had none to waste on the agents of the tyrant enslaving his village. He certainly would have shown none if he had had to fight them.

That was exactly the problem though. When they were the enemy, when they were trying to hurt him, they were obstacles, things to be removed. But when they died, they hadn't been trying to kill him, they had been one more group of people trying to escape an imploding garden, and unlike him they hadn't been fortunate enough to make it. He shook his head angrily as Laena made her last remarks. The only thing more wasted than pity for the dead was pity for a dead enemy.

"Goodbye, Hara," Laena concluded, "I'm sorry it had to end this way."

Once Laena was finished, Giga meandered off to rouse the Chao. Fayde didn't envy being the one to tell them that they now had to keep walking after they thought they were so close to a new home. He wasn't sure that his job was much better; after all, he had to deal with Laena.

"So, how do we transport you?" Fayde asked the lioness as she gingerly stood up. Her leg was definitely badly hurt; it might even be broken, in which case getting her anywhere was going to be quite difficult.

"That's a good…" she said, wincing as she tried to put some weight on her injured leg, "question. I don't know. I seriously doubt that you want to carry me all day, and crawling is too slow for the kind of travel you have in mind."

"I don't want to touch you at all if I can help it," Fayde said derisively.

"I didn't fancy getting cut up by those spines of yours anyway, so I guess I'll need a crutch of some kind." Laena retorted

Fayde snorted and started looking around for something that Laena could possibly use for support.

Unfortunately, dead wood didn't have much in the way of heat or any other energy that Fayde could see, so he had a little trouble finding what he was looking for exactly. Laena helpfully pointed him in the right direction, and by concentrating on "dead spots" that would indicate non-living material, like discarded brush, he was able to find a relatively thick branch that with some pruning would make a decent crutch.

"Here we go," he said, drawing his knife to cut off smaller branches. He then carved the thicker end into a shape that would hopefully be more comfortable under Laena's armpit. He didn't much care about her comfort, but the last thing he wanted was to hear her complain. "How's that?"

Laena tried that makeshift crutch. "A little tall, but otherwise good. Thank you."

"How much should I take off?" Fayde asked, indicating for Laena to give him the crutch.

"About four inches or so, I'd say," she replied. "No more than that."

"I can do that." Fayde was about to start slowly carving the four inches off from one end, when he realized that he had a much better tool for such a thing. He returned the knife to his belt, and removed the glove from his emerald hand. Laena inhaled and stiffened slightly as his fingers morphed into their clawed form. She hid her surprise well. Someone other than Fayde might not have noticed the reaction.

Fayde proceeded to grip the crutch between his thumb and forefinger. He used his other hand to turn the wood, as his claws starting carving into the wood until the extra four inches were completely severed.

"That should do it," Fayde said, handing the crutch back to her and returning his hand to normal. "How is it now?"

"Not spectacular, but it's functional enough," Laena said. When Fayde didn't respond her curiosity got the better of her.

"How did you… do that trick with your hand? Make it shift like that?"

"It's a trick that I… just picked up, you could say." He replaced his glove.

"You don't need to be embarrassed, I had a cousin who had a sixth finger on her right hand. Your obsidian claw hand isn't that much weirder."

"I… what? No, that's not it." Fayde said, caught off guard by Laena's sudden shift in tone.

"Is it related to the god stones, then?"

"The… what?"

"The stones that Dragmar is collecting. The Eagle has one."

"Oh, the Chaos Emeralds. I don't know, maybe." Fayde said, unsettled by how Laena had suddenly taken charge of the conversation. "Anyway, wait here, I'm going to see if the others are ready to go." Fayde began walking away, before she could ask him anything else.

Aureolis was making good time; at this rate, she should reach Clawe's cave in just a few more minutes. She thought it ironic that she had been here just a few months before and been turned away, and was now coming back to ask for help once again. She had wanted to give Fayde and Giga some hope, so she hadn't admitted to them that their odds of securing Clawe's help was not terribly good.

Still, they were rather desperate at this point, and Clawe was still their best hope. So, Aureolis rehearsed what she was planning to say, hoping to come up with something that would come off particularly well to the senior guardian.

"Clawe, we need your help!" Aureolis said with as much vigor as she could summon. "Alaine's gone rogue and she's trying to kill us, and the Chao need to find a new home, and Fayde needs to defeat a Chaos-powered tyrant…" She shook here head, nixing that particular bit of dialogue.

"Oh Master Clawe," she started again, "would you deign to lend us your power and wisdom to assist us lowly students who have gotten in over our heads?" She sighed. "Well yes, technically I am a dropout former student, and Giga doesn't want to learn anything, and Fayde is, well, some sort of mercenary prodigy with psychic powers or something, but still, I would like for you to consider us your pupils…" She passed over the gorge that lay near Clawe's home.

"Oh, who am I kidding? Help us Clawe, you're our only hope…" She started coming in for a landing, and could feel the effect of Clawe's protective measure, as she sensed the presence of the Chaos Force all-but disappear.

She didn't know how (or why) Clawe would create a field that neutralized Chaos Abilities, but he could and he did. Perhaps it was more of a psychological maneuver, forcing his visitors to walk up to his cave the old-fashioned way instead of simply teleporting in with Chaos Control.

She landed at the mouth of the cave and proceeded to walk in. She also did not understand why anyone would want to live in such a dank and dour place. She preferred open spaces and sunlight, to be sure. To add to the eeriness she felt, she wasn't sure when Clawe would finally decide to show himself.

Aureolis crept along, trying to be quiet, if only because the cave was so quiet and she felt awkward about disturbing the silence. She rounded a corner into the main area, and found Clawe meditating with his eyes closed on a flat rock amid the sparse accommodations that he allowed himself. There was one throw rug with a squat little table in the middle. And nothing else. Aurelois was pretty sure that Clawe didn't need to sleep, and even if he did, he could probably do it on the table, on the rock, or standing up even.

"Um, hello? Master Clawe?" she asked, but got no reply.

Aureolis looked at Clawe again, with the same quiet awe that she always did. Even discounting his formidable abilities as a Chaos Guardian, he was an imposing figure. Sitting cross-legged on his rock his head still reached her chest. Standing up, he would dwarf her.

Aureolis also noted Clawe's unique coloring. He had fur that was more red than brown, with white patterns that seemed almost like a design, although they were not recognizable as any objects she knew. Whether they were natural or artificial, the effect was disconcerting and intimidating. The colors made him hard to identify; Aureolis did not know what species of bear featured either red or white fur. There were times that she wondered whether the colors were a result of some arcane and mostly pointless Chaos Ability. She didn't exactly have use for such a thing, but it bothered her that there could be something that seemed so simple that she hadn't even heard of.

"Hello?"

Clawe didn't move to acknowledge her presence. Or even move at all. He didn't even seem to be breathing. Aurleolis inched nervously closer, trying to discern any signs of life in the dim light produced by the candles Clawe had lined the cavern with. Aurleolis didn't know if he got them somewhere or made his own, but the fact that they were still lit meant he had changed them recently.

"Hello Aureolis," Clawe said when she was less than a foot from him, without opening his eyes, startling her. "Don't be shy," he added as she jumped.

"Um, why didn't you respond when I called your name?" she asked, annoyed but at the same time nervous that she was crossing some line. Still, she had dared worse impudence before no matter how intimidated she'd been.

"Because it amused me."

Aurleolis didn't know how to respond. It was hard to know how to talk to Clawe at all. He didn't seem to care for standing on formality, but at the same time he had made it very clear she was in no position to demand anything of him.

"Well?" Clawe asked,

"I hate to bother you," Aurleolis began, forgetting all her preplanned speeches in her nervousness, "as I'm sure that you're busy, but I really do need your help, and I'd understand if you don't want-"

"Stop rambling child," he said simply. "What do you need?"

"Well," she began, "you see, I need-"

"Help," he finished for her.

"Y-yes"

"You wouldn't have come if you didn't want something from me. But I've already turned you down once, what makes you think I'll change my mind?"

Aureolis thought for a moment, "Alaine has gone rogue. She tried to kill my two companions, and me, and she attacked Bemaiget's garden, all for Chaos Emeralds."

Clawe stood in silence, scratching his chin. "Hm. I wasn't expecting that. Tell me more."

Despite Fayde's best efforts, he was having difficulty ignoring Laena. Even with the crutch she was having trouble walking. He glanced over his shoulder as he heard her misplace her crutch on a rock and grunt painfully as it slipped and she was forced to put weight on her bad leg.

"You okay?" he asked grudgingly, without turning all the way around.

"My armpit is killing me," she said, then added, "Well you asked," when Fayde didn't respond.

He almost, almost, laughed at that. She had him there. He had asked. But it wasn't liked he cared, except insofar as he didn't need her to get injured further and slow them down.

"So," he said instead, "tell me about how Daru-Sanrein is run. Slaves didn't get ask who we were working for, so all I know is that Dragmar is in charge."

"Okay," Laena said. "Well, it is true that the king is the ultimate power in the government, but he must contend with a ruling council of nobles who act as advisors, and also watch over their own little portions of the land."

"What, like they all rule a separate piece of the country?"

"Mostly," Laena answered. "In reality, each noble house owns land, and has a retinue of soldiers. Those soldiers make up the greater army. Daru-Sanrein doesn't have a standing army so much as that when the king needs soldiers, he goes to the nobles. This gives the nobles both a stake in what is happening, and a measure of control over it."

"So the nobles are the ones who are letting Dragmar get away with what he's doing?" Fayde asked.

"Yes and no. Traditionally, that would have been the case, but Dragmar has seized extra power for himself by intimidating everyone else into falling in line. Between his size and that emerald he carries around, most people just don't want to mess with him.

"And in reality, not all of the nobles support him anyway. Some are actually pretty adamantly opposed to his rule."

"Really? So there are Daru who are trying to resist Dragmar too?"

"Well," Laena began, "not actively, at least not yet. But Lady Temma of House Analandis is probably the most opposed to Dragmar and his… innovations. If anyone would be likely to lead a revolution, it'd be her. It also helps, of course, that's she's young, and generally more likely to do something stupid than the rest of the council. And she's from a pretty big house, so she's got some power backing her up."

"Temma, huh?" Fayde said. "So I guess she'd be the one to track down if I wanted to try and bring Dragmar's rule down from within."

"Well, I wouldn't get too excited, but she'd probably be your best bet. There are some others who would probably also be sympathetic. Regardless, you're going to need to find a way to impress them before anyone would be willing to help."

"What about you?" Fayde asked.

"Huh?" Laena asked. "What do you mean?"

"Would you be willing to help?"

"I don't plan on dying for anyone's cause anytime soon," she replied. "I'll tell you what you want to know, but I'm not putting myself in harm's way for you."

"Then why'd you do if for Dragmar?" Fayde asked.

"Well…" she began, thinking about it for a second. "The short answer is that Dragmar was in charge. Supporting him was the best and quickest way to get what I wanted."

"And what was that," Fayde asked derisively, "Money? Power?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Yeah, those things are nice, and I wanted them, but I don't care about them so much except as they're important for what I really want."

"And that is?"

"Respect. And the best way to get that was as Captain of the Hunters."

"Wait, you're the captain?"

"Yeah," she said. "I am, was, I suppose, Captain Laena Teranshen of the Hunters of Daru-Sanrein."

"So you led Dragmar's personal assassination squad because you wanted respect. I hope you'll settle for fear and loathing, because that's all anybody in Taero feels for the Hunters." Fayde spat on the ground.

"That's not…" Laena began, "Well, yes, that is how it was. I know that the slaves and a fair number of our own people wouldn't spit on us if we were burning to death in front of them, but that's not how it was supposed to be."

"Then how was it supposed to be?" Fayde asked, unwilling to sympathize but intrigued by her statement.

"The Hunters are supposed to be a ceremonial organization," she said. "We're the current incarnation of what used to be literal hunters; the people who went out to hunt game and bring it back to feed our people. As time went on though, we became more dependent on farming, and game became scarce. Anyway, today the Hunters hold this revered place in society, but we don't really do a whole lot, at least not until Dragmar came to power and militarized us."

"And appointed you as the head."

"Yes." Laena said, "And I see where you're going with this. Look, it wasn't, isn't, as simple as you think. Defying Dragmar wasn't an option. He killed the previous captain of the Hunters for that. I wasn't going to make the same mistake that cost my predecessor his head. You can denounce me for it. I admit I did some bad things under Dragmar, and let a lot more happen, but the alternative was death, and I'm sorry but," she pointed first at herself, then at Fayde, "I care about my skin more than I do about yours. You and your friends can call me evil, and I don't blame you, maybe I am, but I will say I never hurt anybody I wasn't ordered to."

Fayde digested that before speaking. "I don't know if I can forgive you for what you did regardless of what your reasons were. Taking orders isn't an excuse. But I don't think you're evil."

Laena started. "…Really?" she asked.

"Yeah. Opportunistic? Sure. Selfish? Definitely. But evil? I dunno. I think that would make a lot of people evil. Make no mistake though; I don't care whether someone is evil or just selfish or whatever. If they threaten my people I will end them."

"Hmph. I admire your conviction, kid. Try not to let it get you killed."

"Thanks, I guess," Fayde said, "Anyway, you were going to…"

He was interrupted by Gigazubyte running to find them. Giga had been traveling with the Chao who, because of Laena's injury, had been ahead of them for quite some time.

"Fayde!" Giga said. "There's someone up here, and I think that he's looking to talk to us."

"Really?" Fayde asked. "Who is it?"

"I'm not sure," Giga replied, "but are bears big furry things with claws and sharp teeth?"

"Yeah."

"Then it's probably the Clawe guy."

"Wow, I guess Aureolis got through to him," Fayde said, turning to face Laena. "Laena, I'm going ahead with Giga, do your best to catch up."

"That won't be necessary," said a voice from behind them. Fayde and Giga turned to see a red and white Bear, Clawe presumably, standing there, his arms crossed. "I take it that you two are Fayde and Gigazubyte, am I correct?"

"Y-yes sir," Fayde and Giga said almost in unison.

"Great!" Clawe said, breaking into a smile. "I'm just here to tell you both to hurry it on up and get to the cave. Aureolis has convinced me of the seriousness of your situation, so you need to get there quick."

"That's… that's great," Fayde said, "but we're rather limited in how fast we can travel. We've got a tribe of short-legged Chao and a wounded lioness."

"I'm somewhat limited as to how far and fast I can travel," Laena chimed in.

Clawe looked at Laena and scratched his chin. "Hm… That does present a bit of a problem for you two, doesn't it? Well, I suppose that I'll just have to assist you then. Go ahead and gather everyone together, and I can arrange one massive Chaos Control."

"Oh wow," Giga said, "thanks."

"Yes, thank you," Fayde added. He and Giga did as Clawe told them too, and gathered the Chao into one area, along with themselves and Laena.

"Alright then," Clawe said, cracking his knuckles. "Now, this won't hurt a bit; I promise."

Clawe lifted his hands, pointing them at the group. Suddenly, there was a flash of light and… they were still standing there, facing Clawe. Except that Laena and the Chao were gone.

"Um…" Fayde began to ask, "what happened?"

"I got rid of your traveling impairments," Clawe said simply. "Now, you two should be able to make it to the cave in a day or two. I'll be waiting." And with that, he was gone in another flash of light.

Gigazubyte and Fayde just stood there silently for a few seconds, unsure of what exactly to do next, and hoping that Clawe would come back to tell them it was all a joke.

"Well, this sucks," Giga said.


	17. Chapter 17

"Hey," Giga said as Fayde vaulted over a fallen tree, "where do you think Clawe took everybody?"

"I don't know," Fayde replied as Giga scrambled over the log behind him, "but I expect they'll meet us at the cave."

"Aren't you worried, though?" Giga asked, in lieu of voicing his own agitation.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned at all, but I'm more worried about us right now. Wherever they are, Clawe is watching them. I hope. If he's not, there's not a whole lot we can do about it since we don't know where they are. I expect they're at his cave, and either way the only way we're going to find them again is by finding Clawe, so let's get moving."

"Yeah," Giga said, ducking as a branch that Fayde had pushed aside went whipping over his head, "I guess that makes sense."

"Besides, the Chao are your responsibility." Fayde said. Whether he meant it to or not, the remark stung. Giga had been trying to do right by his friends, he really had. He had found a new garden for them as quickly as he was able. It wasn't his fault that the garden had gotten trashed, no more than it was his fault that they were missing now and he didn't know where to find them. Only, he didn't believe himself. It was his fault, for not being faster, for not being stronger. For not stopping Alaine. He had been next to useless in the garden, and because of it they were still looking for a home. Maybe Aurleolis was right, it wasn't enough to have strong companions. He needed to learn how to use his abilities. He needed to learn to fight, so that next time they met Alaine she wouldn't get away. Giga would stop her.

"What about Laena?" he asked Fayde, rather spitefully.

"She… Laena can take care of herself," Fayde replied. "I don't owe her anything." Fayde noticeably sped up his pace, weaving among smaller trees, jumping over fallen ones, and slashing with his hand at vines and leaves that got in his way.

"Hey," Giga shouted at Fayde's rapidly retreating back, "wait up! You're going too fast!"

"You keep up!" was Fayde's retort, "You're not going fast enough. Clawe said he wanted us there in two days. If you don't speed up we'll be late, and I don't want to know what happens then."

"Yeah, well, if you lose me I won't get there at all because I don't know where it is!"

"All right, fine, you win," said Fayde, slowing down and allowing Giga to catch up.

"Hey Fayde," Giga started to say, but Fayde interrupted him.

"Look, Giga, can we just have some quiet time where we don't talk for a while? Can you do that for me? I've got a lot of things on my mind lately and I need some quiet time to think about it all."

Giga wasn't sure if Fayde was being patronizing or sincere, but he wasn't in a terribly talkative mood anyway, so the agreement suited his just fine.

"Yeah, sure, I can do that."

"Thanks."

They trudged along in silence together for a while, Fayde setting rather a faster pace than Giga would have liked, as though he were trying to channel his frustrations into excess energy. Still, he was considerate enough to make sure Giga never fell too far behind, and they made good time. Finally, Giga broke the silence.

"Hey, Fayde?"

Fayde sighed in a way that suggested he was not yet ready to venture out of isolation of his private thoughts. "Yes Giga? What is it?"

"I'm sorry for what I said about Laena."

"Oh…" said Fayde, taken aback. Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't an apology. "That's okay." He paused, looking slightly embarrassed. "I'm sorry for what I said about the Chao. I didn't mean to suggest that you had somehow failed in your responsibilities as leader, if that's what you thought, although I can see how it sounded that way. I think you're doing a good job, considering that you've never done this sort of thing before."

"Thanks." Giga felt like he should say something else, repay the sort of compliment somehow, but anything he could think to say about Laena would probably only serve to irritate Fayde more, as would pestering him with questions about Dragmar. Giga realized how very little he knew about where Fayde came from, other than that Dragmar had taken it over and this made everyone there very unhappy. What was it like before Dragmar though? It sounded like it had been a nice place, otherwise people wouldn't have minded so much when Dragmar started messing it up. Giga didn't even know what Fayde's family was like, if he had any. He spoke of his friends, when he spoke of his past at all, but he never mentioned family. This wasn't a good time to ask that kind of question though, so Giga kept his silence.

They continued walking until it got too dark for Giga to see the trees in his way clearly. Fayde could "see" where he was going in the dark just as well as he could in broad daylight, although Giga couldn't figure out how he did it. Most of the time he seemed to see just as well as a normal person, except at night, when he saw much better. It was uncanny. Giga, however, had no such special power, and though his night vision was pretty good, in the darkness of the forest he was having trouble keeping up with Fayde and not crashing into trees. The thickly clustered leaves of the canopy blocked nearly all light from the stars and moon. Of course, it might also have been due to clouds. The sky had alternated between overcast and sunny all day, and Giga had no way of telling at this point whether clouds covered the sky. He wasn't even sure what phase the moon was in, having not thought about it in several days. He thought it was waning, but it hardly mattered.

Fayde called a halt after the third time Giga complained to him about tripping over an unseen root for the third time and set about finding dry wood for a fire. It took him a while to locate what he was looking for, but he eventually managed to find enough pieces of dead wood that had been protected from the rain or had since dried out enough to burn to make a reasonable pile. Fayde then pulled a small piece of stone from his belt pouch and started making sparks against the edge of his knife. It took a few false starts, but eventually the dry grasses and dead leaves he had gathered caught, and soon they had a nice, decent sized blaze going. They were staring into the fire, enjoying the warmth and light when a twig snapped somewhere just outside the circle of light provided by the fire.

Fayde was on his feet, clawed hand bared, in an instant. "Who's there?" he shouted at the dark, "Show yourself!"

"It's me," Aurleolis said, stepping into the light. Fayde visibly relaxed almost before she spoke, putting his glove back on and settling back down onto the log they had dragged over to the fire to serve as a seat even as she entered the light.

"Have a seat," he said, gesturing to the empty space on the log between him and Giga. "Giga, scoot over a little."

"Thanks," said Aurleolis as she flopped down beside Fayde on the proffered seat. "I've been looking for you guys for hours."

"I thought you were with Clawe," Giga said, "trying to get him to do something about Alaine."

"I was, but he told me it would be a better use of my time to guide you two to his cave."

"So what's the verdict?" Fayde asked, shifting position to face them, "Is Clawe going to do anything about her? Is he going to help us?"

"I… well, yes. He obviously intends to offer us assistance of some sort, or he wouldn't have asked us to meet him at his cave. Had he intended to refuse us I believe he would simply have said so. But as to what form his assistance will take, I cannot say."

"Mm," Fayde said, looking back into the fire. "I don't have much choice but to trust you on that one. Much as I find the possibility of his "help" dubious, we've made a decision to ask him and we're going to follow through. Are Laena and the Chao with him?"

"Oh, yes. They were doing quite well when I left. Clawe put Laena's leg in a binding, he says the swelling should go away and she should be able to walk on it in a couple of days. I think he may have even used his power to induce it to heal faster. He fed everybody and… oh, have you eaten?"

"Nope!" said Giga.

"We've been starving out here in the wilderness," Fayde added.

"Well, Clawe gave me this and told me to bring you these," Aurleolis said, reaching into a satchel that she had slung over her shoulder and handed them each a parcel wrapped in leaves, "They're roasted vegetable rolls, and they're really good. Clawe made them. They got cold while I was searching for you, but I'm sure we can heat them up again."

"Hmm, yeah, they do smell pretty good," Fayde said. "Let me find some sticks."

"So," Giga asked, as Fayde went rummaging through the underbrush in search of appropriate vegetable roasting sticks, "how come Clawe took Laena and the Chao to his cave and not us?"

"I don't know," Aurleolis admitted. "When I asked him about it, he refused to explain. All he said was 'Suffering builds character'. I think it's supposed to be some sort of test."

Before Giga could think of a response to that he was interrupted by Fayde's return.

"Here you go," Fayde said, passing out long sharp sticks. "Try not to poke your eye out with those," he added as he handed one to Giga, who took the advice into consideration and then stuck his tongue out at Fayde. He stuck one of the vegetable rolls on the end of his stick and held it over the fire. Fayde and Aurleolis did likewise. The result was delicious, and Giga was quite sad when the last of his second roll disappeared into his stomach. This was the best food he had had in a long time and he rather wished there was more of it, a concern he decided to voice aloud.

"Hey, Leo, is there any more where that came from?" He hesitated slightly to use the nickname, but Fayde had used it before and if Aurleolis objected to having her name shortened, she gave no sign of it.

"I'm afraid not. I only brought two for each of you. There weren't anymore leftovers."

"Pity," Fayde said, leaning back slightly, "those were fantastic. I could eat another two."

"Did you say leftovers?" Giga asked.

"Yes, Clawe fed everyone dinner. I brought you the leftovers."

"He managed to feed quite a few people in an awfully short space of time," Fayde mused, "and it's good food too."

"Well, when you live by yourself for hundreds of years, it's an important skill to master," Aurleolis replied.

"No," said Fayde, "it's not that. I understand why he would know how to make something like this. What I don't get is how he managed enough to feed everyone on such short notice. It's like he was expecting company."

"Clawe keeps a large garden. It's one of his hobbies."

"Ah, I guess that explains it," Fayde said. He yawned and slid off the log to sit on the ground with his back against it. Giga followed suit. "So," Fayde continued, "Aside from well fed, how is everyone?"

"When I left, the Chao were playing in the stream that runs near his house and Laena was talking about doing some fishing. They seemed content enough."

"That's good then. I want to get an early start tomorrow, so we should turn in soon. Who's going to take first watch?"

"I will," said Aurleolis.

"Great. I'll take second watch. Giga, that means you've got third watch."

"Aw, how come I have to take third watch?"

"Because I said so. The other two watches are taken, and you're the only one left without a watch. Do you want second watch instead?"

"No, not really."

"Then quit whining about it."

Giga didn't think they needed watches at all, and opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it and rolled off the log to try to get some sleep instead. He didn't see why watches were all that important, but Fayde thought they were, and if Giga argued with him about it he would probably end up wasting time he could spend sleeping and then Fayde would come up with something he didn't have a good counter argument for and he'd end up having to take third watch anyway.

He nodded off easily enough, having spent the day trekking through the forest, but it felt like he had only been asleep for minutes, not nearly long enough, when Fayde shook him awake to take third watch. Giga perched himself on top of the log, with his back to the dying embers of the fire. Try as he might to force them open, Giga's eyelids drifted relentlessly shut as the sultry coals warmed his back. He was saved from nodding off by toppling backwards off the log as he did so, just missing Aurleolis, who slept, oblivious, just inches from where he landed with a muffled squawk. He propped himself back up on the log to wait for the day.

It seemed to take forever, and he nearly dozed off several times, but eventually the darkness began to lessen ever so slightly. When the various gray shades of predawn had started brightening into normal colors he shook Fayde and Aurleolis awake, and after Fayde had buried the remains of the fire they set off again.

It was late afternoon before they reached the gorge Aurleolis had mentioned. Giga was feeling ill. A persistent headache had started about an hour before, probably due to lack of sleep and almost unnoticed at first, but it had grown with time. He did his best to ignore it and pay attention to Aurleolis.

"All right, I'm going to have to fly you over to the other side. I could probably carry both of you at once, but it's probably safer to go one at a time. I don't want to drop either of you in the gorge."

"Wouldn't it be easier to teleport us over there?" Fayde asked, "It's only a couple hundred feet to the other side, if that."

"It would be easier, if I could," Aurleolis said, shaking her head.

"What do you mean?" Fayde asked in puzzlement.

"Clawe has some sort of field up, and it's blocking my Chaos abilities. At least, I think that's what is going on. I don't know how he does it, but he's probably the only one who could. Incidentally, it seems to be a lot stronger than it was yesterday. I didn't notice it until I was considerably closer to his cave."

"That's weird. You don't what what it is at all?"

"No, I've never encountered this before. It's quite unsettling, really. If I had to guess, I would say it's a very advanced version of the concealment technique. But on such a scale… Clawe's the only one who could pull off something like that."

"Concealment technique?" Giga asked, "What's that?"

"The concealment technique renders an emerald impossible, or at least difficult, to sense even to Chaos Guardians at close range. It also makes it difficult to teleport into or out of the direct vicinity of the emerald. Most, if not all of the older guardians can do it, they use it to make it difficult to trace them, for privacy, and so that Mo… someone like Alaine can't simply come in and steal their emerald while they sleep."

"Huh," said Fayde, "I wonder if that's responsible for this weird feeling. It's like I'm missing something but I can't remember what. Anyway, let's go talk to Clawe. I want to get this over with."

Giga's headache got worse as Aurleolis flew him over the gorge and continued to increase in intensity with every step he took towards Clawe's home. He wondered dimly against the throbbing in his skull if it wasn't a byproduct of the field Aurleolis was talking about. Eventually he just closed his eyes and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, following Aurleolis' lead only to bump into her when she stopped abruptly. He opened his eyes and looked up. They were standing in front of a dark opening in a rock face that rose out of the surrounding forest, presumably the cave, and Clawe was striding forward to meet them. He was really quite intimidating up close. Not that he wasn't intimidating at a distance, but at a distance it wasn't quite so obvious how much bigger than Giga he was, and it would be harder to see his sharp teeth bared in what Giga really hoped was a grin.

"Ah good, you made it!" he said. "You could have been a bit quicker about it, but not bad."

"Listen," Fayde said, clenching his fist as though he wanted to punch Clawe, "If you wanted us here sooner you could have just teleported us in the first place."

"I didn't," Clawe said, turning and walking back toward his cave. "Well don't just stand there slack jawed, come in, come in!"

Giga, Fayde, and Aurleolis looked at one another, confounded. Giga shrugged, and then winced, and they followed him in.


End file.
